


The One With the Vampire Rehab

by captainangua



Series: DeanCas oneshots [9]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Dean Winchester Has a Sexuality Crisis, Episode Related, Gay Panic, Gen, Kidnapping, Love Confessions, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Original Character(s), Pining, Post-Episode: s12e10 Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets, Shipper Sam, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 09:30:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10085879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainangua/pseuds/captainangua
Summary: “So you want to take these bloodsucking vamps at their word and lock ourselves in with two dozen of them for a month? In the friggin’ middle of nowhere? What part of that sounds like a good idea – feel free to talk me through this again fellas.”~When Team Free Will agree to help a nest of vampires through a withdrawal period, they’re not the only ones Dean’s nervous about being locked in with – Cas isn’t speaking to him.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [preciousanon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/preciousanon/gifts).



> This is stretching the concept of one-shot, but it's going in here anyway because it was SUPPOSED to be 9k, which is what my lovely auction winner asked for. 
> 
> But "Vampires using Vitamin D to cure themselves" as the twitter post went was the prompt, and it's a GOOD one, so... it made me write much more of both canon and OCs than I think I've ever attempted in a fic.
> 
> Hope you like it!

It was strange, Sam often mused. His brother was still one of the most adept liars he had ever come across, masking fear and upset under layers of bravado with ease, and yet every time something frustrated him he seemed to have almost no ability to hide it.

Of course Sam wouldn’t have needed the warning signs this particular morning to help him figure out Dean’s mood. Then again, it would have taken an idiot who’d never spent any time with Dean, or with people at all, to miss the insistent tapping on the steering wheel, the way he’d stopped trying to hum along to the radio after only a few miles, and instead seemed to be most interested in grinding his teeth together.

“Dean,” Sam tried again, as they got into the second hour of saying nothing. “Y’know if you want to talk about it…”

Dean’s grip on the steering wheel increased again, another sure sign this was getting to him.

“Leave it, Sammy.”

“Y’know, I really am -”

“I said _leave it._ ”

Feeling his surliness with the whole situation return, Sam rolled his eyes and stared out the window as they finally rolled into Alliance, Nebraska. If Dean wanted to be like this that still didn’t mean it had to be Sam’s problem. Yet.

“What did he say he thought it was again?” Sam asked, a few moments later, giving in. He knew exactly what they were supposed to be hunting, but he still felt the itching need to get his brother talking. Dean went a little… strange whenever he went quiet too long, and it was an almost lifelong habit to stop him from going there.

“Vampire,” Dean grunted. “Looking like more than one.”

Sam nodded like he was hearing this for the first time. “And Cas thinks he knows who did it?”

Dean glared for a moment that he was daring to mention the angel by name but Sam pretended he hadn’t seen. “Yeah. Should have found it by the time we get there.”

“Kinda makes you feel unnecessary hunting next to an angel sometimes, huh?”

Dean shook his head and concentrated unnecessarily hard on his parking. “He’s still an amateur, whatever species he is this week.”

As the car stopped Dean took a deep breath, apparently steeling himself. “Ok. He said he was just around the corner from here.”

Sam’s phone started buzzing just as Dean finished talking. Dean’s didn’t.

Sam hesitated before reading the message, and hesitated still further before reading out what it said. “Actually… he says he’s now tracked it across town.”

Cas hadn’t added any of his customary emojis to the message. This was bad.

Dean rolled his eyes and restarted the car. “What emojis did he send for that?”

“Uh.” Sam coughed. “None.”

Dean seemed to take that worse than not being the one contacted but he said nothing all the way over to the new address.

It was an apartment building and it was easy to spot which one was theirs because Cas was waiting for them outside of it.

“Morning,” Dean said, with some feeling as they got out of the car. Technically, they were now into the afternoon, but Sam figured it would be best not to correct him on that.

“I found one, sort of,” Cas explained to Sam, still ignoring Dean.

“Sort of?” they asked together.

Again, Cas continued to focus on Sam, who clenched and unclenched his hands uncomfortably. He wasn’t used to getting so much of the angel’s undivided attention, especially not with Dean standing right next to him.

“Well. I found him, but he’s now significantly more dead than he had been already. Come…” He sighed. “Come see.”

Cas led them into the building. Sam half expected Dean to throw him a look making fun of Cas acting strangely for him to share in, but Dean only kept his head down and his jaw clenched.

Things were definitely bad.

“Ok… yeah, that’s definitely more dead,” Dean said meaningfully as they walked through the door that looked too busted open to have been Cas’s work. “So this wasn’t you?” He asked, nodding down at the severed vampire head. The teeth were out, and it was almost a meter away from the body, which from what Sam could see was well dressed. Unusual, compared to the vampires he’d met before, though that probably wasn’t a fair stereotype.

“He was like this when I got here,” Cas sad, addressing Dean for the first time though still not looking at him, circling the body and again managing to remind Sam greatly of a cat. “But I think there were two of them hunting together, and now one is dead.”

“So what, one killed his partner?”

“Or her,” Sam noted absently as he bent down to get a better look at the body. It was still warm, Cas couldn’t have missed the killer by much.

“Any other hunters supposed to be around the area?”

“…Not as far as I know, but you know that at least half of them don’t talk to us.”

“No, I think it was another vampire,” Cas put in, folding his arms.

“What, does it _smell_ like vampire in here?” Dean sneered, not looking round.

Cas blinked, only the briefest trace of irritation flashing over his face, so quick Sam almost didn’t catch it. “Yes,” he said simply.

There was the sound of someone slow clapping. “Hey, very impressive.”

Sam turned around, hand immediately on the machete he’d brought, assuming they’d have vampires to fight that day, but he didn’t feel any great panic. The voice didn’t exactly sound sinister – it sounded welcoming, which was a difficult tone to feel alarmed by.

The speaker himself didn’t look alarming either, despite his rather mysterious reveal of himself by stepping out from behind the previously closed door. He looked like the president of a big fraternity – tall, white, blonde, and walking with a smile and swagger that reminded Sam a little painfully of his brother a decade ago. But appearances weren’t everything, and Sam didn’t even think for a second the man was as young or human as he looked, so he kept a tight grip on his blade and could see that beside him the other two were doing the same.

“This your work then?” Dean asked, nodding down at the body.

The frat-and-probably-vamp boy grinned. It really was a _Dean_ sort of grin. “Nice detective work.” His grin widened and the vamp teeth came out. For a moment they all stood on edge, ready to strike as soon as he dared to move, but then the fangs retracted again.

“Wow, wow, fellas, I’m on your side, I swear. Carlos here wasn’t getting with the program. I’m guessing you chased him back here because you heard about what he was doing to people - just like I did.”

Cas narrowed his eyes. “What is _the program_ , then?”

“I was… sorta hoping you were gonna ask about that actually. Maybe get you to relax and hear the rest of what I want to say – though maybe not.” He nodded at Sam and Dean one by one. “I mean you are the Winchesters, right?”

“In the flesh,” Dean told him, meeting his smile with a slower one of his own. “And we don’t usually spend much time hearing what vampires want to tell us.”

If they’d been alone, Sam might childishly have brought up Benny, but he figured it probably wasn’t the time.

The vampire laughed. “Oh, seriously, no need for the threats, guys. I’m like a huge fan. Name’s Jim by the way. Hey.”

Sam blinked. “A _fan._ Really?”

“Well sure! God, that Eve chick was not a picnic for us monsters to live through. I say we all owe you big, and I’m far from the only one saying it. And hey, that’s not even touching on all the world-saving rumours…”

“Your program,” Cas prompted as Sam worked on processing this idea of being known and respected by monsters as well as hunters. It was a bizarre idea.

The vampire slapped his forehead. “Right. Getting a little sidetracked, sorry. Well see I’ve got this buddy, and they think they’ve found the secret to maybe curing us of the bloodcravings, maybe even helping us get out in the sun more.” He nodded down at the decapitated head. “Carlos was supposed to be working towards that with us. But…” He shook his head. “Few days ago he snapped, said that the whole venture was unnatural, that he wasn’t going to be part of it, and went off on a killing spree.”

He smiled weakly. “None of our group have taken human blood in years, we all want to be cured.”

“That’s admirable,” Cas told him. “How exactly are you planning on curing yourselves though?”

The vampire drew himself up taller. “Vitamin D supplements. _I know, right_?” he added when none of them immediately said anything.

He grinned and slapped a hand to his chest. “Now, me, I’m not exactly the guy following all the science, but I think its genius.”

“It sounds -” Dean started, before Cas cut him off.

“It does sound genius,” he agreed, sounding slightly surprised. “The science is sound. It would solve all the main deficiencies of vampirism, especially your issues with sunlight. It might even -”

“I mean I guess if it means you guys aren’t killing everyone, we’re happy. If it means you all go psycho from lack of blood…” Dean trailed off meaningfully.

To Sam’s surprise Jim didn’t shrug that off, but nodded solemnly. “We have been thinking about that, don’t you worry. But also…” He bit down on his lip and raised an eyebrow. “It might be we could use your help on a few things. Y’know. Kinks to iron out before we go on full lock down.”

“Lock down?” Sam asked.

“We figured the safest and well, most effective way to try this would be locking ourselves in a large enough building to fit us all, so that we were able to monitor each other for possible side effects, or withdrawal.”

“What, you getting TV cameras in there with you? ‘The Five Vampires take on the Five Step Programme’?” Dean put in, moving forward slightly.

Jim shifted awkwardly. “There’s actually more like twenty-five of us.”

Dean gaped. “Ok this _is_ nuts. You can’t just do that, you’d need -”

“Would you keep emergency animal blood supplies in there for those having bad withdrawals?” Cas asked, cutting Dean off again.

Jim nodded slowly. “That’s… one of the things we’ve still been debating.” He shrugged, giving them a winning smile. “A lot of us have had bad experiences with pretty, uh, _authoritarian_ types of nests, so we’ve been trying out full on democratic free speech. Which has…”

Sam smiled. “Working about as well as herding cats then?”

The vampire nodded, shoulders sagging. “Progress has been pretty slow in getting this show on the road,” he agreed on a weak laugh. “We could actually… I mean _I_ was thinking an outside authority could be just what we need…”

Sam’s eyes widened. “An outside authority like… us?”

“No way,” Dean spluttered immediately. “Like, no offense buddy, but -”

“It sounds very interesting,” Cas said, talking over him again. This time it earned him a bemused scowl from Dean, which Cas resolutely ignored. Had they been alone in the room Sam’s impulse would have been to mediate the clearly escalating situation between them, but as that currently wasn’t an option he let his eyes dart between them in amusement.

Jim waited a moment, as though checking he still had permission to speak. “… Some of us, me included, were suggesting finding someone, or someones, able to… keep an eye on us all, someone who wasn’t involved – an unbiased observer who could track our changes, check that no one deteriorates at a pace that starts to look alarming. And… Yeah.”

“And yeah?” Dean asked, eyebrow raised.

The vampire took a deep breath. Sam would hazard a guess that as well as looking young that Jim really wasn’t actually that old. There was a sort of unstoppable confidence in all the _old_ old vampires Sam had met before, and Jim really hadn’t acquired that yet.

“And we could also use those people to be hunters for other reasons,” he said, looking Dean right in the eye this time. “I might be wrong, but judging from how Carlos acted out, and how other people said he was talking, I don’t think he was the only one in the group feeling the way he did.”

“You think you’re sheltering another vamp just waiting to go _full_ -vamp,” Dean finished for him.

“Worse, since they don’t seem interested in leaving or showing us who they are – because it seems to me everyone in there has a good reason to want to be with us in this,” he clarified, and Sam wanted to smile at the vampire’s earnest belief in his peers.

“I can only guess that whoever it is wants to sabotage what we’re doing. And we’ve worked too hard for that – and it’s not in your interests either.”

“It’s not?”

“Do you want twenty-five _cured_ and grateful vampires to have around on your doorstep, or do you want the same ones starting to look _very_ hungry?”

“What d’you mean ‘on your doorstep’,” Dean asked, stepping forward. Sam reached out a hand to stop him. He doubted the vampire somehow knew about and was referring to the bunker, which was still in the next state, and was more generally referencing them tending to stick to the mid-west.

“I didn’t mean anything by it -”

“Jim, I would appreciate the chance to help people instead of hunting them,” Cas said quietly from behind them. “Of course I do not speak for the Winchesters, but I would have the power to defend myself against any vampire, I do not sleep, and the science interests me.”

“Cas -” Dean started as Sam squeezed his arm tightly – a small warning to save his domestic until they were more in private.

He smiled at Jim. “Can you give us a second?”

The vampire looked behind him at where Dean and Cas were locked in their own language of another staring contest and nodded. “Sure. How about I give you a few hours? If you want to chat about this some more come find me at this address – alright?” He handed Sam a card, and by the time he looked back up the vampire was walking out the door.

“Hey, when did we decide to just let him go?” Dean demanded. Sam decided to ignore that, and took a deep breath. He needed to feel a Hell of a lot steadier to start dealing with this sparring couple.

“He wasn’t a threat,” Cas said, turning away to look out the window, clearly furious.

“Ok, maybe _you decided_ he wasn’t a threat, but on what kind of _vampire hunt_ do we just let one walk away?”

“Apparently, on my kind of hunt,” Cas said icily, enunciating every word carefully. “The vampire we were hunting is dead. He may have had an accomplice, and Jim supports us finding them and bringing them to justice.”

“And maybe working out a cure to vampirism,” Sam added, looking down at the fangs of the deceased Carlos. “Like a real one. We could use that. Just think of all the vampires that could help, that wouldn’t need to end up in purgatory. At the least it sounds like they could maybe take to normal life easier. Think of how this, well - think how this could have helped Benny -”

“Oh, awesome so now what, we wanna start an adopt a vampire scheme?” Dean asked scathingly, ignoring the Benny comment.

“What happened to Benny?” Cas asked, deigning to address Dean directly again.

Dean continued to pretend he hadn’t heard the vampire’s name and something clicked in Sam’s mind. Dean had never told him about Benny.

“I mean we’re _hunters_. We _hunt_ monsters, we don’t go putting them all through _rehab.”_

“Well we’re also not trying to be like, the _British_ Men of Letters here,” Sam reminded him. “I mean really what we do is we _find_ the supernatural. Then… and well then we found out what we should do about what we find.” Sam caught Cas’s eye, who was still giving the whole room the vibe of a cat that was sick of being petted. “I want to help with this too. I say we meet them later, see how legit these people seem, and think about what they want us to be for them. And like Jim was saying most of them might decide they don’t even want us there.”

Dean stared at Sam, body hunched and tense but arms and hands wide. “So… you want to take these _bloodsucking vamps_ at their word and lock ourselves in with _two dozen_ of them for a _month_? In the friggin’ _middle of nowhere_? Because it’s _Nebraska._ It’s gonna be the middle of nowhere. Just… just talk me through this again and tell me what part of that sounds like a good idea – really - feel free to _talk me through this again_ fellas.”

“I think you heard us fine the first time,” Cas said coolly. “If you’d like to hear more information you can join us later when we go to meet Jim again.” As the angel finished speaking he gave Sam a barely noticeable glance, almost to check for validation, and Sam gave him a short nod, and a smile that was meant to be supportive.

“I can’t believe this,” Dean said. But before he could demand again for more explanations, or for either of them to change their minds, Cas walked over to Sam and indicated he wanted to see the card.

“Now,” he said, giving Sam another conspiratorial look, “where is this address?”

*

Dean had never trusted people with business cards. Vampires with business cards, as well as being a ridiculous concept, were doubly untrustworthy.

“‘Jim Jameson. Research Consultant.’” He read out aloud as he drove before tossing the card back into Sam’s lap. “Well that sounds… vague.”

 

“Lots of people work in consultancy, Dean,” Sam told him, not looking up from his phone. “Ok, I looked him up. Says here he’s written a bunch of articles, sorta thing that turns up in University journals. And, get this, his main specialty is looking into the historical grounding of supernatural mythos – basically debunking his own species over and over.”

 

“Convenient,” Dean grunted.

 

“I just say there’s no harm in hearing them out,” Sam said, putting his phone away. “And if not, hey, he’s probably leading us to a whole bunch more vamps we can waste. Not exactly a waste of time either way.”

 

“What happened to Benny?” Cas’s voice came in from behind. Dean gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d never explained to Cas how things had gone down there. Maybe, pettily, he hadn’t said anything because until now the angel had never bothered to ask. And maybe he’d enjoyed, in Benny, a person who was just… his. Just his to care about, to think about, who’d cared about him for his own sake, not knowing anything about who he was supposed to be or who his family was or anything in the beginning.

 

Dean wanted to ignore the question again, but the car had gone quiet, he could _feel_ Sam looking at him in that, _if you don’t tell him I will_ way.

 

“Benny’s dead,” he said eventually. “Again.”

 

Cas didn’t immediately say anything, and because Dean was determined to not look around and see his reaction he had no idea how the angel might be taking the news. They’d never exactly been close, him and Benny, but they had all had this kind of… camaraderie built up from all that time running for their lives together, saving each other’s lives over and over, watching each other’s backs, keeping watch together and talking while they let Dean sleep, or thought he was sleeping…

 

“But… you brought him back with you,” Cas said eventually.

 

“Yeah. Didn’t mean he got an easy ride of it when he got here.”

 

“He said he was going to try and keep clean.”

 

“Well he gave that a good shot.”

 

“He died so that Dean could get me out of purgatory,” Sam put in. “It was during the trials. And he… he didn’t want to come back again.”

 

The unspoken words there of course being that Dean had killed him, but Cas, to his credit, didn’t put say it. “I see,” was all he said.

 

“…It’s number seven,” Sam said, looking out the window at the apartment buildings they were driving past.

 

“I got it, Sammy.”

 

“Alright.”

 

Dean wanted the building to look like a dingy crack den, but it seemed… totally respectable. Not cheap. After buzzing the right apartment buzzer, Dean backed away to stare up at the place, trying to ignore he was almost backing into Cas. Not a lot of windows, which was not a big surprise, but if he was judging this right the apartment in question had goddamn flower baskets outside. But then, Benny had enjoyed baking…

 

“I’m sorry about Benny, Dean,” Cas said quietly.

 

Dean didn’t turn around, he refused to look into that face that had walked away from him the night before and see pity. “Nothing to be sorry for,” he grunted. “You didn’t kill him.”

 

Sensibly keeping himself out of things Sam pushed on the door when he heard they’d been let in. “You guys coming?” he asked pointedly.

 

That was the real problem, Dean thought again as he started following Sam up the stairs. If he was _open_ enough about this shit he would have just asked his brother how much he knew, how much he’d guessed. He’d always avoided thinking like that because… because it was weird to think about it like that, to think about Sam judging him like that. But though Sam might not always be the greatest at reading people, he liked to _know_ things, didn’t he?

 

And if he hadn’t guessed a thing before last night his brain had to be whirring like crazy by now…

 

Jim the research consultant vampire who looked about as old as Dean had the first time he’d started leaving on solo hunts was waiting for them at his doorway, which Dean worked out definitely had to be the apartment with the window boxes.

 

“Good to see you guys – glad you could make it,” he said, like they were there for a dinner party, holding out a hand for Sam to shake. But Dean was watching his other hand, and it was rubbing nervously at the lining of his pocket. Nervous of hunters coming into his territory, or nervous of whatever was waiting for them inside though? Or was it something else?

“I’ve got some people in here interested in meeting you,” he said, the same sales-guy wide smile spreading over his face. “Y’know, some of the other key members of the group.”

Dean traced the indent his machete made on the inside of his coat. “Oh yeah? How many we talking here?”

Jim seemed to need to do some counting in his head for that. “Including me? Four. That ok with you guys?”

“That’s no issue,” Cas said, before Dean had a chance to say anything. Dean barely repressed the urge to roll his eyes. Sure, Cas might have been the one to find this case, but he should still be doing some major penance for rushing off with no real explanation, not taking over things and acting like the big man.

Jim kept smiling, and turned his back on them with a welcoming beckon of an arm. “Alright then! Come on in and meet the troops.”

The suspects, Dean reminded himself as they followed Jim through what seemed a creepily tidy apartment. And again, a load of houseplants. Weird.

As they rounded in to the sitting room, Cas leaned maddeningly close towards Dean and murmured, “He’s telling the truth. Four vampires.”

Dean nodded slightly, relaxing just a little. Of course Cas knew he’d be thinking like that – Cas generally just _got_ how he was feeling, which was why it was so hurtful that he didn’t get how he’d acted had to be affecting Dean now…

“Dean, Sam, Castiel? Meet the main brains behind the operation,” Jim announced as they rounded the corner. “This is -”

“How did you know Cas’s name?” Dean put in immediately.

Ha. He’d got him now, he thought with satisfaction as he watched the vampire squirm.

“Like I say, you guys are pretty famous, even among us monsters, so of course -”

The woman sitting on the sofa, who looked to be in her late twenties and had obviously recently been crying snorted. “He’s read your books,” she told them, completely deadpan. There was a slight Mexican accent to her voice, Dean noted.

“Our books?” Sam asked, before the obvious clicked. “…Oh. The uh. The Carver -”

“Carver Edlund, yeah,” Jim muttered, looking at his feet. “Yeah, thanks Daria…” He looked back up at them, self-deprecating smile briefly replacing the salesman one. “So this is Daria.” For a moment Jim seemed at a loss for words, and licked his lips. “Carlos was her brother,” he said eventually, prompting Daria to grip the offered hand from the woman, who had to be at least the same height as Cas, sitting next to her.

“Carlos knew the rules,” she said, sounding like she was reading off of a script. “I should have gone and done it myself, as soon as he left, but…” Her voice cracked, and the woman next to her put an arm around her neck.

“No one was going to ask that of you, Dar,” Jim assured her quietly, before turning back to look between his guests. “Daria had nothing to do with her brother’s actions.”

“Well. I obviously had _everything_ to do with his actions,” she muttered, before her friend beside her narrowed her eyes.

“Don’t talk like that,” she ordered Daria, then looked up at Dean, Sam and Cas. “I’m Angie,” she said. “The science behind this program has primarily been mine.”

Dean had no way of telling without being told how old any of these vamps were, but something about the look this woman had in her eye let him know she’d seen a lot of life, and some of the worst it too.

He always, probably – well, definitely – tended to think of Peter Parker-esque small, skinny white dudes when he thought ‘scientist’. This woman fit absolutely none of those descriptors being black, tall and pretty heavy looking, and maybe in her early thirties, but he didn’t bother doubting for a second that she was telling the truth. He could tell that she was sizing them all up more than anyone else in the room, and it took no effort to imagine her looking comfortable in a lab coat.

“Your research sounds fascinating,” Cas told her.

“Thank you. You’re… you’re the angel, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’d… I’d be interested in hearing what you had to say about it,” she admitted, almost shyly.

“Me too,” said the last vampire in the room, who Dean had almost made the mistake of not noticing, despite the fact he was sitting nearest to them. But he was a pretty… non-descript looking guy. Nice, but not snazzy suit and tie, and gray hair combed back. He looked about fifty, and seemed like the thoughtful industrialist from a movie, and he spoke like he was used to being in charge. Interesting then, that he let Jim take command, Dean mused, filing that thought away for later.

“Ethan Matthews,” he informed them.

“Ethan’s been one of the main financers for the project,” Jim said in further explanation. “We’ve all pitched in of course, but…”

“But not quite to the level of buying an abandoned hotel,” Matthews finished for him magnanimously.

“Abandoned hotel, huh?” Dean put in, feeling like they’d stayed quiet long enough, and trying to ignore the part of himself that was amused. He was pretty sure that’s how things had worked on Angel for a few seasons.

“That’s currently the chosen location for this experiment, yes,” Jim said carefully, clearly cautious of going into too much detail yet. “How much time do you guys think you can spare of your time for this, if we were going to get you involved?”

“Not long,” Dean said.

At the same time, Cas assured him, “indefinitely.”

“Maybe a week, just to see how things go,” Sam said, after an uncomfortable few moments of silence in which Dean had to fight down the urge to glare at the angel.

“At the moment I can’t be a hundred percent sure of how long these pills will take to have real effect on anyone,” Angie told them, her eyes darting between Dean and Cas with some interest. “I’ve had limited opportunity for testing until now, but I believe a week would be long enough to start seeing some results, to get some idea of what we’re working with.”

“So if we were going to do this, we’d need to work out some ground rules about what you guys think we’re there for, what kind of authority you’d be… y’know, prepared to give us,” Sam said.

“Yes we would,” Daria agreed quietly, dark eyes darting between them with unguarded suspicion.

Jim cleared his throat. “So, uh. Why don’t we get working on that now, and we’ll call you when we get some agreement from the group through?”

“ _If_ we get group agreement on this, Jim,” Angie reminded him gently. “Not everyone’s going to like this, you know that.” She looked back up at them, and this time at Dean particularly. “You two have a reputation for some fairness in what you do, but hunters in general aren’t everyone’s favorite people in this group.”

“We don’t need popularity, ma’am, we’d just need respect,” Dean assured her, meeting her eye coolly.

After a long moment, she nodded. “Ok then. Let’s get thinking about… how this could work.”

*

Cas had lived a long time, and over long periods of time where nothing had ever happened to him – he knew the value of patience, of strategizing for a long game, on not letting small issues phase him.

That didn’t change the fact that not speaking to Dean for the course of only a day was wearing on him.

But the _point_ , he reminded himself, was that it was also, very clearly, wearing on Dean.

When they made it back to the Bunker that night, Cas still spending those hours travelling stationed in the back seat of the car, remembering that before he might have simply, to the Winchesters eyes, have disappeared, and reappeared somewhere else where he could gather his thoughts alone. Now of course he didn’t even have a car of his own to drive off in.

 

Maybe it was some of that freedom, that independence, that his wings, and to a much reduced extent his car had brought for him that he’d been chasing the night before when he’d stormed out of the Bunker and walked to the nearest town, sitting up in a bar until he’d found something that looked like a case and making his way to it. He might, as Dean kept reminding him, be a relative amateur in hunting, but it was the only thing he could think of to do with himself after he’d healed the homeless man he’d passed on the way to the bar.

 

As he believed Dean had also once pointed out, angels really were unimaginative creatures.

 

Which was his problem in a personal sense as well, Cas thought gloomily as he walked through the Bunker to the room he’d recently been granted as his own, despite the fact that he didn’t need it for any of its practical uses. He’d been in love with Dean Winchester too long to imagine what he might be without that fact inexorably deciding his almost every choice.

 

He might not use the bed he had for sleeping, but it was useful to use as a place of escape, of privacy. He never used to crave that, though of course with Naomi in his past he’d grown wary of trusting in what he thought he remembered. If he was right, a lot had changed for him in the recent short years. He was no longer connected to the Host. There was no real trust there, and most days he wasn’t sure he felt like an angel. He wasn’t sure many angels other than he, and apparently, Metatron, who’d also spent a lot of time on Earth, could have survived any length of time as a human without becoming the same sort of soulless creature he had once unwittingly made of Sam.

 

Dean’s bed was different than his own – softer, it encouraged the user to sink into it. Cas had now experienced that for himself first hand, last night. The part before he’d stormed out.

 

Cas had spent the evening leading to that watching Dean go through several bottles of beer, with more urgency than Cas was used to seeing in him. There was that buzzing sensation he’d almost got so used to that he barely even noticed anymore when he was around Dean, letting him know that Dean wanted something on too buried a level to express in a prayer, and something he wished Cas could give him.

 

That feeling was stronger than usual, building even, with the amount of alcohol Dean was getting through, and Cas was finding it hard not to lean over and ask Dean what was wrong throughout their conversation. Sam wasn’t around, which Cas knew would help, but his human friends tended to prefer someone to have a real reason behind him asking personal questions, and not simply because he could feel their discomfort on a level they were unaware of. Dean especially didn’t always like being reminded of the ways in which Cas was not human.

 

But it didn’t take all that long into their conversation about what Cas thought alcohol tasted like for Dean to try and get to the point himself.

 

“Cas. Y’know… After Billie, and… all that. When I said I was _worried_ , not mad?”

 

Cas had stiffened slightly in his chair but nodded. “I remember.”

 

Dean had nodded, almost as though he was trying to encourage himself into doing something, saying something. “It was true. But Cas…” Dean paused, licked his lips. It was one of those moments that Cas made use of the fact he didn’t technically need to breathe.

 

“Cas, I worry about you all the time. I say you’re family – and I mean it, but I don’t want you to start turning into _this_ family – because we’re twenty kinds of screwed up and you… you don’t deserve to be that with us. You deserve a hell of a lot more, and maybe we’re – maybe I’m not the right person to be able to give it to you.”

 

That buzzing sensation of longing was as bad as Cas could ever remember it being, and Dean was leaning forwards towards him, in a way that Cas was almost sure the hunter wasn’t even aware of. 

 

“Dean, I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Cas said eventually. “You do… you do want me around? You and Sam?”

 

“Always,” Dean told him, voice gone hoarse. “But Cas… seeing you with those angels, they think there’s something wrong with you or something. And they’re wrong, but Cas you have, you have _nothing_ and you keep risking it again and again and putting yourself on the line and it’s always because of us, because of…” Dean swallowed, keeping his eyes fixed on the table. “Because of me.”

Now Cas did reach out to his friend, no longer sure he could stop himself, and put his hand on Dean’s shoulder. It rested above that spot, now faded, where Cas had first marked him, first took hold of him.

 

“Dean, you know I’d – that I’d do anything for you – you and Sam, and that I’m happier having it that way than I ever would have been remaining in Heaven.”

 

Dean shook his head, still not looking up. “But you shouldn’t – you shouldn’t have to be _content_ with that Cas, you should be able to do something for yourself, to have things you deserve.”

 

“Do something for myself?”

 

“Yeah. Like, y’know – be _selfish_ more often, whatever that looks like for you.”

 

Ever since he experienced life as a human and became irrevocably tied to this body, Cas had begun to feel this very human feeling. His limbs would begin moving without any permission he could remember, and this time it was his other hand, moving to Dean’s chin, raising it gently, forcing Dean to look at him. Those eyes seemed to reflect just how lost, how uncertain Cas felt inside as Cas leaned in and kissed those lips that had so long preoccupied him.

 

It was by no means their first kiss. But it was the first one in the quiet, the first that didn’t feel like an accident. The first that Cas had initiated.

 

As he tugged at Dean’s lower lip, gently exploring with his teeth, he heard Dean pull away slightly, heard him breathe Cas’s name. Not telling him to stop, but sounding like he was definitely begging for something, as he shuddered out another breath that sounded like it was only barely being held back from becoming a sob.

 

“It’s ok, Dean,” Cas said, because he knew that was what humans expected to hear when they weren’t sure if they were really ok or not. He gripped Dean gently in his arms, trying to ground him in the present, and not all those other missed opportunities when Cas hadn’t thought to kiss back.

 

The night before they confronted Raphael that first time, and Dean had said he’d wanted to show Cas what he meant by what he thought he was missing. He’d later tried to play the slow, tender kiss off as a joke.

 

In Purgatory shortly after Dean had found him, and Benny had walked off to investigate a noise, Dean had kissed him again, fierce and hard and desperate – but then pulled away again before Cas had any opportunity to react.

 

By the time Dean had found him working in the Gas-n-Sip he’d grown more familiar with how Dean thought, could tell that he’d wanted to. But Cas, human, and still feeling abandoned and in pain, hadn’t let him get close enough that night to let him have that absolution.

 

In the car before they decided Dean had to leave and face Amara, Cas had thought he’d known what Dean might want. But then Dean had called him a brother and he hadn’t been sure of what he felt.

 

Now he thought, hoped, he knew.

“My bedroom,” Dean mumbled as his lips smashed back into Cas’s own.

 

Cas had nodded, feeling a little breathless himself. Giddy, he’d thought. So that was what the word meant.

 

“Dean. I -” Cas started trying to speak as he sat down on the edge of Dean’s bed a few minutes later, and Dean gently pushed him back, letting him sink into the softness of that mattress as he climbed on top of him and one by one started to unfasten the buttons on his shirt.

 

“Don’t,” Dean said roughly as Cas started opening his mouth again. “Just… please?”

 

Cas nodded slightly, and was rewarded with Dean leaning down to kiss him again. For a moment there everything had felt… right. Final. Like, after everything that they’d been through this was where they were supposed to have been heading.

 

And then Sam had opened the door.

 

Dean had acted almost as quickly as he might have if they’d been interrupted by a demon – in a flash, facing Sam and standing up, half-heartedly throwing a pillow in Cas’s direction.

 

Cas couldn’t help but think that had this been an episode on a TV show Dean had on, he might have found the scenario funny.

 

“Sam,” Dean had grunted. “We were – Cas was just…”

 

As he’d trailed off Sam’s eyes flicked hesitantly between the two.

 

“Hello, Sam,” Cas said eventually.

 

Sam cleared his throat. “Well I was just coming in about this text from Mom… Sorry? I did try knocking…”

 

“You don’t need to knock, you know that,” Dean said, and for a moment Cas had wondered just how open Dean was suddenly capable of being. “Nothing was going on here.”

 

Sam’s eyes had darted back to Cas, who’d started to sit up. “I mean – if you say so?” Sam had seemed to decide the situation was worth risking a small smile. “You know I don’t care -”

 

“Well I do, and nothing was happening,” Dean had growled.

 

At which point Cas had stood up and left the room, left the bunker, and therefore couldn’t be certain of what the brothers had said to each other next.

 

He was glad they had this strange case to leave for soon, he thought as he dug his fingernails into the covers of his own bed. There was a part of him itching to leave again, but that didn’t mean he knew where he thought he would go. His stand of independence the night before had still resulted in him calling the Winchesters to him.

 

When he heard the knock on the door Cas felt almost embarrassed by how much it startled him. “Come in,” he said, flexing his hands to calm himself. He was almost certain it didn’t sound like Dean outside the door – but if it was? What did he want to hear from him?

 

“Cas?”

 

Cas let out a slow breath at the sound of Sam’s voice, both a relief and disappointment. “Hello, Sam. Have you heard anything from Jim’s group?”

 

“Uh – yeah, actually. Jim just called, said he got them all to agree to all the terms. I mean the way he was talking it sounds as though not all of them are exactly looking forward to us joining them, but we can’t exactly blame ‘em for that… Cas?”

 

“Mm?” Cas looked up, realizing now that he hadn’t done that yet.

 

“You… ok?” Sam moved awkwardly to sit on the other side of the bed, his gait that of a man cursed with such height that hyper-awareness of his surroundings was a necessity.

 

Cas sighed out again. “I’m fine, Sam.” That was what he was meant to say, wasn’t it?

 

“Well… you’re allowed to not be, y’know? I mean, hell, Dean’s not.”

 

Cas wasn’t sure what Sam wanted as a response to that, so he said nothing.

 

“Look,” Sam said eventually. “I don’t know what was going on with the two of you last night, so I can’t talk about that. And – like you know I’m sorry if I messed things up for you.”

 

“You didn’t -” Cas started, but Sam cut him off with a gentle raise of a hand.

 

“…But I know you mean the world to Dean, and that no one is worse at being able to just… say what he’s feeling than my brother.” Sam tried for a smile. “We just weren’t ever that kind of family, y’know? And Dean always had to be the tough guy.”

 

“Just… I know I’ve changed, I accept that, I accept that it’s part of humanity – or being close to it,” Cas said slowly. “But Dean – he can’t acknowledge that about himself, while expecting it in me.”

 

“Oh, he’s a giant hypocrite.”

 

“A stirring defense,” Cas said, smirking slightly.

 

Sam shrugged. “Dean’s my brother. I’ve had to live with him basically my whole life - so I know he’s a dick. And… you’re my friend. So I’m gonna take your side.”

 

Sam was throwing these words out flippantly, meant to lighten the mood, but Cas only felt heavier, more emotional at this irrational support of his behavior.

 

“I behaved like a child today,” Cas admitted. “I know that. It wasn’t even so much in how Dean hurt me it’s how I… _let myself_ feel that hurt that still stings. I’m still not used to how emotions affect me sometimes, and allowing myself to feel that happy for that one moment made me realize just how badly I was counting in it to give me… something.” He bit down on his lip, still frustrated with how _pathetic_ he’d allowed himself to become. “Some… purpose.” But it was more than that. He’d craved a happiness he felt could belong to him, something he wasn’t sure he knew how to name exactly.

 

“You know for what it’s worth you’re always family to me too, right? Doesn’t matter what’s going on with you two.”

 

“Thanks, Sam.”

 

“I mean it. And…” Sam seemed to need a moment to work through what he wanted to say. “And look. He might not, like, be dealing with it well yet? But I know Dean cares, the problem is that he can’t admit it properly yet – but that’s even _more_ of a sign he cares.”

 

Cas squinted at him uncertainly. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

 

Sam paused, again seemingly lost as how he wanted to continue. “Dad said once that after we lost Mom Dean just… stopped talking. Like completely – he was four years old and he didn’t say a _word_ \- for _months._ Then he refused to talk about Dad after – y’know. And I got thinking that again when you – when Lisa…” Cas nodded. He wasn’t sure he now felt comfortable hearing that name brought up either – he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do what he did again – not even for Dean, not now he had been human, had experienced what it meant to have so little to cling to.

 

“The first thing he said to me when he got out of that hospital was that we weren’t ever going to bring them up. So we never did. And then when the Leviathan – well when we thought we’d lost _you_ …”

 

Cas nodded hesitantly, feeling frustrated for his friend’s sake that Sam’s best efforts to cheer him up were only making him more miserable through the memories they induced.

 

“Well… well Dean didn’t talk to me then either – less than ever. He was drinking more, he wasn’t sleeping – I’ve never been so worried about him, Cas. Every time we think we’ve lost you there’s just this… this _despair_ that hits him, hits him hard.” Sam shrugged again. “Basically, weird as our lives have been, you’ve been the most stable relationship he’s ever had, outside of me. I think he’s terrified of losing you.”

 

Sam tried for another smile. “So I guess that’s my two-bit defense case, for what it’s worth.”

 

Cas smiled back, letting his shoulders slump slightly. “Thank you.”

 

“You wanna sit up and watch the end of Westworld? Dean’s already in his room.”

 

“That sounds… better than silence. Though I think I saw some spoilers while you were inside.”

 

“Ok… just, just don’t tell me?”

 

*

Dean hated having to fill the Impala up too full. He felt like he was hurting her somehow – even with three of them living out of her they’d somehow never had to, so seeing everything get so full of food they had to start stacking cans and boxes in between the weapons in the boot was surreal.

 

But then, Dean reminded himself, he should be getting used to it. They had a home now – a real home, and they both had a lot more stuff.

 

Cas of course, being an angel with no belongings and no need for food, was only going to take up the space he himself would be taking in the car.

 

“So I got that weird muesli shit you’re into, and a bag of apples. You happy?”

 

Sam stood next to him, morning sun blazing through behind him as he thoughtfully reviewed the contents of the car. “What about alcohol?”

 

“Since when do you ask me about that? Beer’s in front, flasks are full.”

 

“…Only Cas was saying the other night he wanted to try some other kinds.”

 

Dean frowned. “What, he wants to make cocktails now? Why? Alcohol doesn’t even affect him unless you like buy up a whole liquor store and I so don’t have the money for that.”

 

“It’s about making him feel more included, Dean.”

 

Dean grunted and continued staring at the car.

 

“And… and it’s about you being less of a dick towards him.”

 

Taking a heaving breath in Dean turned and looked his brother in the eye. “Oh yeah?”

 

“Yeah. Like, dude, I know this shit isn’t easy, but you can’t put all your issues on Cas like this, expect him to take it well and have me there to use as an excuse. Because I don’t care how you want to identify!”

 

Dean blinked. “Sammy…”

 

“No, seriously. And besides, I don’t even think angels even _think_ about gender in the same way, so the whole thing becomes even more ridiculous than it was already.”

 

Dean decided to ignore this. It was safer – as he was pretty sure his brother knew, he’d spent basically his whole life trying to avoid this conversation, and with no one more than Sam. Because if Sam could still look up to him then –

 

“Well, I’m sorry, but he started this whole cold shoulder routine -”

 

“And he’s doing that because you hurt him. He ran off because you hurt him, Dean – this is Cas, when has he ever done something that wasn’t about you.”

 

“Don’t say that…”

 

“Why? ‘Cause it freaks you out?” Sam raised his eyebrows. There wasn’t pity there, but there was something close to mockery, and Dean wasn’t sure he was ready to handle that yet. “It’s been freaking Cas out. Maybe you should talk over your common interests here.”

 

“Yeah, interests that are none of your business,” Dean muttered, losing energy to fight.

 

Sam’s shoulders sagged and there, _there_ , was the wide-eyed sympathy Dean had been so frightened of seeing. “We’re about to lock ourselves in with a bunch of vampires. For a _week_. Can I not be caught in another special episode of you two trying to ice each other out?”

 

“We don’t -”

 

But then Cas was coming up the Bunker steps and Dean’s mouth clammed shut. For a moment their eyes met, and there was no hostility, no ‘ice’. Just wobbly vulnerability.

 

Dean wasn’t sure if that meant there was more or less to be afraid of.

 

He cleared his throat, after becoming aware that he wasn’t sure how long they’d just been standing there staring at each other. “Uh. Car’s ready.”

 

“I… I see that.”

 

Cas sat in the back, which still, as it always did, made Dean feel like it was all he could to force himself to keep his focus on the road, especially now. What was Cas looking like back there – was he watching the back of Dean’s head? Frowning or nodding along to the songs? Watching the flat fields and the highway?

 

“What d’you want on now?” Sam asked him after they’d finished going through their first album. “Radio, or we got Sabbath’s _Born Again,_ or Stones’ _Let it Bleed._ ”

 

“Thought I left in -”

 

“I’m not. I can’t do Aerosmith again today, Dean, you are not making me.”

 

Dean rolled his eyes. “Hey Cas,” he said, leaning casually back in his seat and trying to pretend the gesture didn’t cost him any effort. “Stones or Sabbath?”

 

Cas appeared to think on that for a moment. “I like the radio,” he said eventually.

 

Dean could hear Sam holding in a breath next to him, as Dean said, “Ok,” and turned on the radio.

 

They weren’t good, but maybe they were getting there again.

 

*

 

“See, this is more like it,” Dean announced as they rolled up outside the old hotel, which was, as Dean had predicted the day before, indeed in the middle of nowhere. It was three stories high though only barely visible under the vines that had crawled up over it andlooked to be consuming it from the outside.

 

“You didn’t like his apartment, did you,” Sam said, with some amusement in his voice as Dean stopped the car and shook his head.

 

“Nope. Too clean, too modern. Creepy, for a vampire.”

 

“If you’re talking about Jim, I don’t think he’s actually that old,” Cas pointed out, speaking up for the first time in a few hours.

 

“Ok, but it’s the look of the thing,” Dean insisted as he put a door out of the car. He was at least talking like he considered them friends again, which Cas could admit to himself left him feeling slavishly grateful.

 

The front door opened with a loud creak that Cas suspected would cheer Dean up further and Jim waved at them from the step. “Hey! Glad you guys could make it!”

 

“Glad to be here,” Sam called over.

 

“Some place,” Dean noted as they walked through the doorway, encouraged by the vampire’s outstretched, welcoming arm.

 

“You’d be surprised how few places fit all our quotas really…”

 

Cas glanced around. Things were dusty, and seemed unused, but the lights were working. This place might have been fairly grand and impressive, once. “You have some protection but we could help you with more,” Cas offered.

 

“Protection…”

 

“Well, someone in your group clearly knows enough about witchcraft to deter most regular people and monsters from the building. We could up that, and, with your permission, probably find something to help keep all of you… in.”

 

Castiel was slightly worried about offending his host, but Jim only nodded enthusiastically. “Ok! We’ll have to bring that to the group later, it sounds great. But _now_ what I want is to introduce you to the rest of the troops…” he said, hand on Cas’s shoulder as he beckoned them into the large seating area, where twenty-five vampires stared up with them. Some looked nervous, some looked angry, others look bored. A few looked genuinely interested.

 

One particular young-looking woman was standing next to Angie eyed them like a cat who’d just had a toy dangled in front of its face – alert and predatory, but relaxed and not exactly malicious.

 

“Hello everyone!” Jim shouted, clapping his hands together loudly. “So I think Angie’s ready to go with the first round of pills – we’ll be taking these twice a day for at least this week so let’s get hoping for sugar coated!”

 

Angie folded her arms and shook her head, smiling fondly.

 

“Ok, plain old, but we can work with that, this week’s all about figuring out what we need to work on. As everyone knows, we can’t be a hundred percent sure of any side effects that might occur, with withdrawals hitting us in the next day or so since you’ve all been encouraged not to eat anything before getting here.”

 

There were a few grumbles and eye rolls to this. One vampire dressed in a long coat that hadn’t been popularly produced in the past century actually melodramatically flopped back on the couch, eyes rolling up to the ceiling.

 

“Now the Winchesters, and their friend Castiel -”

 

“Their _angel_ friend?” someone asked, with obvious skepticism.

 

When no one seemed keen to either confirm or deny this Cas looked the woman in the eye and nodded. “Yes.”

 

“I don’t believe that,” someone else said.

 

Years ago, Cas might have tried to intimidate his doubters, threaten them, take their disrespect of him as a disrespect against Heaven. Now he was barely sure he counted as an angel himself.

 

So instead of arguing with them, he simply said, “I… don’t really care?”

 

Beside him, he heard Sam give a snort of laughter.

 

“Uh, in any case,” Jim started again, giving another handclap. “They’re here to help us out, as everyone knows. They know what they’re allowed to do here, and so do we.”

 

Angie nodded. “I’m going to keep in charge of pill distribution, but if one of you is always there with me then we can compare any notes you might have.” From the scientist’s short glance over at Jim, Cas guessed that she was not the one behind that new stipulation.

 

“What about the blood supplies?” someone leaning on the edge of one of the couches asked, their eyes narrowed in suspicion. Cas understood it must be hard. There was so much longing in the room he could almost feel it, even if it wasn’t his own – so much hope, and so much instinct not to trust in that. There was not much communal feeling binding the group either, Cas noted. This was not a regular vampire nest, which was a family of sorts – this was a lot of very different people there for a common goal.

 

Jim hesitated, as Dean asked, “You brought the animal blood with you then?”

 

Jim nodded. “It’s in the van outside,” he admitted. “But I was hoping that maybe the uh -” He turned to look at Cas. “Would you look after it? Hide it somewhere?”

Cas was suddenly all too aware of every pair of eyes in the room being suddenly fixed on him. “Of course,” he said.

 

“Ok,” Jim said, clapping his hands together once again. Cas had a feeling Dean was going to start finding that habit annoying.

 

“After you make it in with that, and the rest of your supplies then we are good to go – lockdown time.”

 

*

 

Dean was taking up two seats on one of the dusty old couches, his laptop on his knee and doing his best to pretend he wasn’t nervous about being surrounded by a hotel full of hungry vampires when he noticed his brother sidling over to him.

 

“Ok,” Sam said. “It was tricky, but I talked to Jim and me and Cas managed to get a tripwire alarm set up around the building. No vampire is leaving without us knowing.”

 

“Nice work,” Dean noted, trying not to let the ‘me and Cas’ part bother him.

 

“You researching?”

 

“Yup. Most I’ve found on vitamin D in relation to vampires thus far is a joke on twitter. Look at the retweets on this thing. D’you think this is where they got the idea?”

 

“Huh.”

 

“Yeah. But I did some digging into Mr Vampire Warbucks doing most of the funding legwork and look – I think I found him.”

 

Dean pulled up the tab with the blurry black-and-white photo.

 

“Is that…”

 

“Kansas. Pre-civil war. He was a politician.” Dean shook his head at the smiling group of men on the screen. “I trust old vampires even less than regular ones. Like what have they been doing with their lives, huh?”

 

Sam shrugged and crouched down for a better look at the screen. “I mean, there’s going to be old ones in here, and probably a lot of ones who really aren’t so good. But they say they want to try and be better, so.”

 

“Except this one dick we’re trying to find.”

 

Sam sighed out a breath and nodded. “Yeah. Except that one dick.”

 

“Y’got anything further there?”

 

Sam shook his head and ran a hand back through his hair. “No. I tried talking to Daria about her brother but she’s still pretty upset – I think I can buy she had nothing to do with what Carlos did. She agrees though that she doesn’t see him doing anything like this unless he was sure someone was backing him.”

                                                                                                          

Dean nodded. “So, upset, but not like try to sell your vampiric soul at a crossroads upset.”

 

“Or get an angel to get them resurrected upset.”

 

“Or bully a reaper into getting them out of purgatory upset.”

 

Sam smirked. “Right. She seems pretty cool actually, a good few of them do,” he said scanning the room, where the vampires present in it were giving them a wide berth.

 

“Yeah, but we don’t even know many of their names. We don’t know much, Sammy.”

 

“Well if it’s making you so uneasy then stand up and start talking to them.”

 

Dean frowned but he closed his laptop with a snap. He wasn’t sure he trusted the vampires to leave his stuff alone, but hell, apparently they couldn’t run off with anything without setting off an alarm, so he set the laptop down on the side table, hoping that none of the ancient dust would creep into the fans.

 

“Could they not have sent in a cleaning team before they started this whole bizarro detox week?”

 

Sam ignored that. “And look, while you’re up…”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Talk to Cas?”

 

Dean rolled his eyes but he got to his feet. “What are you gonna do?”

 

Sam shrugged as he took Dean’s seat on the couch. “I haven’t checked the news today yet.”

 

“Seriously?” shaking his head, Dean walked over towards Jim, who was talking with a woman who looked as though she’d been about fifty when she was turned, and she hadn’t figured out how to use a comb on her hair before or since.

 

“How’s it going with the ringleading?” Dean asked, trying to inject some confidence into his voice. He wasn’t sure how he felt being a ‘supervisor’ of a situation. He was a lot more comfortable with reacting than he was planning ahead.

 

“Hey – well it’s going not bad, not bad. Though of course, not so much a ringleader here. Democratic process we’re running -”

 

“He’s very modest – he’s the one who brought us all together,” the woman beside him said. “Now are you Sam or Dean?”

 

There was something strikingly and almost uncomfortably alert about those brown eyes. “Uh,” Dean coughed. “Dean.”

 

“So are you the one who-”

 

“O- _Kay_ Martha, I don’t think Dean wants to hear anything about the rumors you’ve been listening to,” Jim warned her with a nervous laugh.

 

“If you’re here to keep us in line are you going to organize recreational nights?”

 

Dean blinked. That hadn’t exactly been a question he’d expected to hear.

 

“Martha -”

 

“Only I think everyone would appreciate something to keep them occupied of an evening,” Martha told him, ignoring Jim completely. There was a slight accent – maybe French? – to her voice that emerged more and more as she drew herself up to her, admittedly not terribly impressive height.

 

Dean was still, as always, prepared to be suspicious, but he didn’t think he’d found the intended killer he was looking for.

 

“Uh, well we’ll uh – get thinking on that.”

 

“A dance night might be good.”

 

“A… a dance night, uh…”

 

“You’re a good sort,” she said with a tight smile, as she gave him a slight pat on the arm and turned away.

 

“She’s…” Dean started.

 

Jim laughed. “She’s definitely something. Reminds me a bit of my Mom, and I think she likes having people to mother, so we get on ok.”

 

“That’s uh, yeah…”

 

“You know she actually played a big part in the Haiti revolution? And that was _after_ she’d been bitten – like man that lady lived a life. Sorry,” Jim added, apparently spotting some of Dean’s uncertainty of how to react. “I was a History major, I still get excited by learning everyone’s stories.”

 

“So I take it you’re, uh, not exactly one of the older ones here then.”

 

Jim laughed. “What gave it away? Nah, I’d only be about… fifty in human years. Fell in with the wrong crowd at Stanford, things went a little sideways from there…”

 

“Hey, Stanford. That was Sam, too.”

 

Jim’s eyes lit up slightly. “Oh God, of course. I meant to ask him about my old fraternity actually…”

 

“You mentioned your Mom, there. She still around?”

 

When Jim didn’t immediately answer Dean wanted to kick himself. Or congratulate himself. Getting to the meat of this thing might be helpful.

 

“Yeah, she’s in a care home, not that far from here actually,” the vampire said eventually. “Can’t complain. They, look after her well, I pay them to.” He shrugged. “Partly why I was so keen to rush things along when Angie told me what she’d been working on. Be nice for her to see me again.”

 

“You haven’t spoken to her?”

 

“Would you want your Mom to see you as a monster?”

 

Dean thought about his own mother returning to him. In all the points of his life she could have come back to him it wasn’t the worst – but it definitely wasn’t the best either.

 

“I get what you mean,” Dean said.

 

*

Part of the reason Cas hadn’t felt comfortable staying in the Bunker with the Winchesters for any great length of time was because he found it difficult not having some purpose to fill his time went in the nights when they had to sleep, and he was left to sit up alone. Resting, which once he’d been able to do for decades at a time, now felt so unnatural, so wasteful to him – particularly after spending time as a human, as a mortal. Sometimes he’d sit up reading the volumes available in the Men of Letter’s library, or more often reading longer articles online, or watching TV. Occasionally, he’d get himself into arguments online about his opinions on the Wire. One night, when Dean and Sam had still been locked away Cas had just… gone walking.

 

But sitting awake at night in a building full of vampires was different.

 

“So angels don’t need sleep?” Angie asked him, as they looked over her day one of notes. Cas liked getting a glimpse of other people’s scientific methods. No matter how certain some things may end up being he enjoyed finding out the different ways people grew to understand that.

 

“No. We can, I suppose. I have at times when I’ve been weakened. Again, I can eat, but I get little from it.”

 

Angie nodded. “Vampires can’t. It’s too much for our system to handle – we usually are forced into regurgitating whatever we try.” She smiled and shuffled her papers into a new order on the desk, less dusty now they’d got to cleaning some of the room. “I try not to think about it much, but I really do miss stew. I was wonderful at making stews.”

 

“What about other liquids? Not blood, but…”

 

“That’s… an interesting one. I’ve actually been considering trying – oh,” she said, stopping as Dean came into the records room which they’d previously had to themselves. “Trouble sleeping?”

 

Cas looked away as Dean slouched past the aging couch by the doorway and apparently decided it wasn’t clean enough to sit down in yet. “Yeah. No offense, but… I don’t sleep easy surrounded by a bunch of vampires.”

 

“None taken,” she assured him, though Cas could tell that some of his new friend’s demeanor was tighter, more reserved now. “You’re a hunter. You’re a suspicious breed.”

 

Dean shrugged, yet offered no further explanation or apology. “You doing your… science thing? Cas loves all this nerdy shit.”

 

Cas decided not to acknowledge that. Though he knew it was likely meant as a warm compliment from Dean, he couldn’t decide whether it offended him or not.

 

“Castiel agreed to help me with my work, yes.”

 

“Isn’t it a little weird, making yourself one of your own guinea pigs? Won’t that skew some of your results?” Dean asked, now perching himself against the couch and folding his arms tightly.

 

“Dean -”

 

“It’s alright, Castiel. I hadn’t planned to, because as you say, I knew it would be important to observe, and to do so with an unbiased eye. But then you agreed to assist in supervision, and I was reminded that I wasn’t ever going into this project with the appropriate disassociation that might have been useful for it.”

 

“Oh yeah?”

 

“Besides the obvious that I want to be able to use this to help in my own life, my girlfriend is the reason I started work on any of this in earnest.”

 

“Which one is she?”

 

Cas could feel the vampire bristle beside him and he held himself back from chiding Dean again.

 

“Sara. Her name’s Sara.”

 

Dean made a face. “The one who looks like junkie Helen Mirren?”

 

Angie barked out a laugh. “No, you’re thinking of Sarah. Although… strangely accurate description. No, Sara’s… well, I can introduce you to her later.”

 

Something about the way Angie’s mouth softened slightly as she spoke made Cas feel like he was aching a little inside. “You’ve known her a long time.”

 

“Yes. She’s much, much older than me, although you wouldn’t think it to look at her. We… well, when I was turned I was brought into a nest which she was already a part of. In a sense.”

 

Dean glanced at Cas, as though to check he was also listening, and reacting in the way Dean expected him to. “Just a sense?”

 

“She was one of my Maker’s kept… attack dogs,” Angie said eventually, with obvious distaste. “Some of us are… _stronger_ than others, and there are a lot of theories into how that works, why that is… Sara was one of them. I was turned for my mind, for what they hoped I might be able to find out for them.” She smirked; a hard, bitter glint nestled in her eyes. “They wanted me to develop some kind of serum, something that would help them defeat their rivals by making them all stronger.”

 

“You didn’t then?”

 

She shrugged. “I tried, at the time. But I was consumed by hunger at the time, and I missed my family – my children. I wasn’t in the best place to think rationally. But I’m not sure it’s ever gonna be done though. Certainly not by me.”

 

“Are you the only two that made it out from your old Nest?”

 

She gave Cas a smile. “We saved each other. The way they treated her and the others – they kept her starving, ready for a feral attack at the sound of a whistle. But there was something they never quite managed to break about her. They’d made her a monster but she still took the time to try and make me laugh. How could I not fall for that?”

 

“You ever try to go back and find your old family?” Dean asked, voice a little hoarse.

 

“Sara is my family now,” she told him firmly. “My children would be significantly older than me by now if they’re still alive – I don’t see any situation in which that might go well.”

 

Cas considered bringing up the issue of Mary Winchester in Dean’s own life, but at the look on his friend’s face he remained silent.

 

“Makes sense,” Dean said eventually. “I knew a vampire once actually, Benny.” He gave Cas another quick glance at that, which almost seemed like it might be apologetic. “He found out what had happened to the people he left behind once and it, uh, didn’t work out so great for him.”

 

“Benny. Cajun, tall, penchant for wearing caps?”

“That’s the man.”

“I… I watched him die, decades ago – that was my first year. How the hell did you meet him – he was dead before you were born, surely.”

“Purgatory,” Cas answered for him, earning himself a look of something like awe.

“So it is true,” Angie murmured. “Well, thank you but I… I’d prefer not to know anymore about what happens after death for me.”

“I get it,” Dean said, nodding. “Though, speaking as someone who’s tried out the whole set? Purgatory’s probably most fun of the bunch.”

Angie smiled. “Comforting, I suppose? Huh. In any case,” she said, standing up and folding up her folder of papers, “I’d better go and find Sara. She enjoys trying to wind Jim up, and, well. The kid’s got enough on his plate to worry about.” And without offering any more of an explanation she stood up and left the room.

Leaving them alone together for the first time since –

“Weird, thinking she’s an old lady,” Dean remarked, as the door closed on them.

Cas picked up the pen Angie had left behind on the desk and began moving it between his fingers. That, playing with things, fidgeting – that was new. “The length of her years still amount to only a moment of mine. Does that make me an old man?”

“Well you’re… you,” Dean finished lamely, looking down at his shoes. Cas regarded him, unblinking.

He wanted to forgive him. Had already, if he was honest with himself. Not crossing the room to Dean and telling him so was almost painful, but that was what was really holding him back. He needed to have some pride left to clutch onto or he would have nothing left when Dean inevitably pushed him away again.

“Benny couldn’t adjust to Earth life because he missed his girlfriend,” Dean said eventually. “He went off on a vengeance mission that I went with him on to find the dicks that killed him. He thought they’d killed the human girl they found him with. But they’d turned her.” Dean looked up and met Cas’s eyes at last, though it felt as though he wasn’t really seeing him. “I killed her.”

“I’m sure you had a good reason for that if you did.”

“I mean… I think I did. He didn’t ever call me out over it. The part I regret is not being there for him after. I knew he wasn’t doing so well, but. Well.”

“You and Sam had fallen out again.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah. Again. But I think even if I had been able to be the friend he’d needed he still wouldn’t have wanted to go on. He’d gotten a moment of getting to think they’d get to skip off into the immortal sunset together, and then he was alone again, knowing that whatever human friends he got around him… he was always gonna end up back on his own.”

“Are you trying to say I’m like Benny, or the woman?”

Dean blinked.

“I can tell that you’re drawing some kind of comparison in your head, but it’s baffling me as to what it might be. You’re needlessly confusing issues in your head again.”

“Or maybe I just thought you might actually have a little fucking interest in what happened to our friend,” Dean grunted, spine straightening again.

“I do, but I can also… feel some of your surface thoughts, and I think you know that. You don’t need to hide from me, Dean.” He said the last part quieter, feeling like it was being drawn from him without his permission.

It had an immediate effect on Dean who winced as though Cas had struck him. “Coming from the guy who hasn’t spoken to me in two days? I’ll keep that in mind.”

Cas was very, very close to calling out after his friend as Dean opened the door and walked away from him, but he held his tongue. He wasn’t sure what he thought he had to lose though.

*

 

Sam had always enjoyed doing interviews on cases – but it wasn’t usually the monster they were interviewing, and they were the most interesting part of every case. So he could admit that a part of him was setting up these interviews with the rest of the hotel’s inhabitants as much to alleviate his own boredom as it was to identify potential suspects in the building.

 

As Daria astutely put it when she sat down across from him. “You’re trying to find Carlos’s partner, aren’t you?”

 

“Uh…”

 

She waved a dismissive hand and leaned back in her chair, eyeing him carefully.

 

“It’s ok. I understand. You have a job, you’re very good at doing it from what I hear. I’m not going to try holding you back. I want this project to succeed more than anyone.”

 

Sam couldn’t stop himself raising an eyebrow as he flipped his notepad to a new sheet of paper. “Yeah? Even after Carlos…?”

 

“Even after Jim killed him?”

 

She smiled slightly. “Jim killed Carlos because I told him to do what I knew I wouldn’t have the strength to do myself.”  She tilted her head to one side, accent having grown thicker now. “Do you think you’d be able to kill your brother, if you knew he was only going to kill others – become more of a monster?”

 

“I’m not sure,” Sam admitted. He liked to think that the two of them had learned something about consequences, but he knew that the hard evidence of their experiences and choices were stacked against him.

 

She smiled as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. Possibly did, if Jim had gone sharing those books around.

 

“What did you mean before… about what Carlos did still being your fault?”

 

She gave him a sharp look. “I didn’t help him. I never encouraged him.”

 

“That’s not what I’m saying. But you said something before about -”

 

“Oh. Something maudlin, probably, about his whole situation being my fault I imagine,” she said, the hardness in her eyes dulling slightly. “It was me that changed him in the first place, of course.”

 

She shrugged, as though to imply that the circumstances meant nothing to her now. “We were poor, with no one else to help us and he was sick – deathly sick. I heard something about a ‘Miracle Cure For All’. I was desperate, so I volunteered myself for it, then came home and passed on the new ‘cure’ and lifestyle to my brother.” She wrapped her arms a little tighter around herself.

 

“I’ve always been filled since with the notion that I cursed him. That maybe I’d always cursed us both. He followed me over the border a century and a half ago and he believed me when I told him I could save him. But I couldn’t save the important parts, maybe. I’m not sure. If I really killed his soul that day… then what am I still hoping for for me?”

 

As she paused for a moment Sam wondered if he was supposed to speak, and was relieved when she seemed happy to continue talking.

 

“No. He made his choices, again and again, and again and again I believed it might be the time he changed, that he resisted. I knew that if I went after him he would be upset, and I would be weak again. So I let Jim go after him.”

 

Something about the way the woman looked him in the eye reminded Sam a little eerily of Cas, he’d decided. Or like Cas had once appeared. She seemed almost like human concerns were of interest to her, but not on any level she personally connected with.

 

“Do you judge me for that?”

 

“No,” Sam told her honestly. “You… you did what you’ve done for the best reasons you had and you’re still trying to be better.”

 

Daria smiled, apparently satisfied. “So am I off your suspects list?”

 

“Mine doesn’t mean my brother’s,” Sam reminded her. “But I do still genuinely want to check for our own research notes things like your body temperature, for a start, so I can’t let you go just yet…”

 

When Sam had finished his questions and tests for Daria, he slumped back in his seat, feeling exhausted.

“So… you look like you let Daria tire you out a bit,” the next vampire taking her seat, in a way that was almost apologetic, observed. Sam smiled, sitting up again as he nodded at the woman who gifted him with a nervous smile in return.

 

“She’s… definitely something,” Sam said, nodding.

 

“She’s kinda everything I want to be when I grow up – if, y’know, I was actually gonna do that.”

 

Sam had been spending the best part of several days trying to figure out the obvious differences between the vampires, and he was almost certain that there was something fresher, brighter about this woman. She looked to be in her late twenties, and his guess was that she couldn’t be any older than him.

 

“So uh, thanks for sitting down - I think it’ll really help with the getting more people tested, keep everyone know how it’s going so far. I’m Sam, by the way.”

 

She smiled, a little bashfully. “Yeah, I know who you are. I’m Lucy.” She really had a very pretty smile, Sam caught himself thinking.

 

“So… how is this different than what Angie records?” She seemed to be nervous about asking questions, but determine to ask them anyway.

 

“Well Angie’s mostly looking for science, we’ve also not got the ulterior motives behind what we’re doing, and it’ll be useful for us to keep track of any changes if we know you all better.”

 

“Also easier to trust us, right?”

 

“That, too.”

 

He didn’t want to mention the Carlos mystery partner issue if he didn’t have to, but it seemed most people had guessed anyway. He was after all, a hunter, and there to do a job.

 

“It’s ok,” Lucy assured him, pushing her blonde hair back from her face. “I wouldn’t trust us either, I don’t think.” She smiled at him again and Sam felt something inside him flip somersaults.

 

 _No,_ he snapped at himself, hearing Dean’s voice joining in to chastise him for what he hadn’t even thought of yet.

 

Coughing, Sam looked up at her, hoping he wasn’t being as obvious as he felt he had to looked. “So, uh, Lucy. How long have you…”

 

“Been a vampire?” She seemed to be counting in her head. “Four years, I think. Yes. Wait, no – yes. It was a summer,” she finished with a short laugh. “Sorry. Math was never my strong point. Yeah, four years ago, but I’d known about them for, I guess, almost… seventeen years now?” She blinked. “Shit.”

 

Her eyes widened and she leaned back a little in her chair. “Sorry. I guess I hadn’t thought about it in a while.”

 

“That’s no problem. I – I get that. Adding up time can get strange.”

 

How long would Sam be able to say he’d lived if he tried adding up his years in Hell?

 

He could really understand the impulse not to look back.

 

Lucy shot him another shy glance and Sam coughed again. Right. He had questions. He had a lot of questions.

 

“So uh, what are you hoping Angie’s Vitamin D tablets will be able to do for you?”

 

For a moment Lucy sat quietly looking at her hands. “If it develops into something more that would be… _amazing_ , but if it could just switch the blood hunger off, give me a reason not to need it any more...” She looked back up at him. “Don’t want to feel like a monster anymore. I didn’t choose this, I want to be able to enjoy the rest of my life – or, y’know. Unlife.”

 

“That seems fair.”

 

The smile she gave him seemed so fragile Sam wasn’t sure he could bear to watch it fall. “So… Martha told me last night that you guys were thinking of putting on some kind of entertainment tonight.”

 

“Which one… oh, right,” he finished, a sudden vivid memory of his earlier conversation with the old vampire flashing into his head. “I mean we hadn’t _planned_ anything – event managing’s not exactly in our experience… _Socialising_ hasn’t ever exactly ever been something we’ve done much of - in any form…”

 

“Well maybe… maybe you should practice that,” Lucy told him, looking him in the eye, suddenly bold.

 

Sam laughed but then he thought…. Why not? Getting everyone in a group might be the best way of observing them all, and it really was getting boring already, and it was only day one.

 

“You know what? When I finish up with this you bring Martha over my way,” Sam told her.

 

Dean wouldn’t like this. But Sam didn’t like having to live with Dean and Cas not talking to each other, _again,_ so he figured his brother could suck it.

 

*

 

Dean had tried to ignore most of the mess through the hotel – it was a big place, they weren’t there long and it really would take an army to get any of the layers of dust and grime shifted. But the kitchen, that he had too much of a lifelong compulsion about to not get it at least half-way clean before he made himself a sandwich. It also gave himself something to do while Sam and Cas were off playing science with the vampires.

 

He'd only had a few bites of said sandwich when Daria walked in to join him.

 

“I take it you’re not interested in my sandwich,” Dean stated, letting one of his hands drift under the table to the knife on his belt.

 

“No,” she said, taking a seat across from him. “I want to know who you think cooperated with my brother in trying to stop Angie’s work.”

 

Dean chewed slowly before putting the sandwich down and swallowing. “It’s been a day, and you guys haven’t exactly been able to give us any new leads. We’re good, but we ain’t that good.”

 

The vampire didn’t look away from him. Dean wasn’t used to getting that level of attention from anyone but Cas, and he had to try to not make it obvious it bothered him.

 

“Who have you narrowed it down to at least? Let me help you work through them.” She never raised her voice, but something about the careful way she began to pronounce her words gave it a new intensity.

 

“Why are you so certain there was anyone?” Dean challenged her. “What if this was just your brother mouthing off, trying to make himself feel like he had a team onside when really he was striking out as a one-man band.”

 

“Because I know my brother. If this was him making a decision on his own he would have owned to it, taken pride in it.” She shook her head as though she thought that would help clear its insides. “Please. I’m locked in here with nothing but the hunger and Carlos on my mind. Give me something else to think on.”

 

Dean eyed her warily. “Side effects really starting to hit you guys, huh?”

 

“It’s not as bad as I was expecting,” she said, but the slight snarled curl of her lip betrayed the tension she was feeling. “Cold turkey can’t be an easy thing for anyone to deal with. At least we’re being given supplements… So. You may not have certainties, but you must have guesses.”

 

Dean rolled his eyes and picked up his sandwich again. “I wasn’t sure about Jim.”

 

She screwed up her face in disgust – exactly the reaction Dean had been expecting, but it was nice to be proven right. “Jim’s harmless. And he’s the organizer. Why would he sabotage his own plan?”

 

Dean shrugged. “Always suspect the guy running the show. And he smiles too much.”

 

“You don’t like his _smile_?”

 

“I _suspect_ him because I don’t trust vampires who smile too _much_ at me.”

 

“Hmmph. The scientific method of the modern hunter.”

 

“Gut instinct’s not nothing sweetheart.”

 

Daria seemed to think about this for a moment before starting to smile. “Hmm. The angel never seems to smile-”

 

“Yeah, well you can leave him out of this,” Dean snapped, a little harsher than he’d intended to.

 

“Touchy. Who else fails the test set by your organs?”

 

Dean glowered, but obediently started redrawing his mental list of suspects, which did admittedly still include everyone in the building, including Daria. But right up there at the top… “Ok. Angie’s girlfriend. Way people talk about her she sounds like a loose cannon.”

 

Daria’s face shut down flat. “She’s a sweet soul. She might still be more dangerous, more unpredictable than anyone here, but she wants to be better – if not for herself, then for Angie. I’m sure of that much. Besides. She and Carlos did not exactly get on,” she added, her smile softening. “He didn’t have any patience for her… whimsy.”

 

“Ok – what about Mr Matthews with the money?”

 

“You mean – oh, Sara, hello.”

 

Dean realized he definitely hadn’t met Angie’s girlfriend who was now standing by the kitchen door, because he would have remembered the interaction. She looked… vampiric. There really wasn’t a better word for it. She wasn’t completely as pale as the movies, but she could have been the classic Dracula bride – slight, long dark hair, and wide dark eyes that seemed oversized for her face. She was wearing jeans and a checked shirt, but her bare feet, and the way she was staring at him made him feel like she should be in a ragged white dress.

 

Attack dog, Angie had called her. But from Dean’s limited experience of dogs he was definitely thinking of her as more of a cat person. He didn’t feel like she would announce herself if she did decide to pounce.

 

“Hey,” Dean said, picking up his sandwich in one hand while letting is other rest again by his knife.

 

He was going to sleep for a week when he got out of this place. He was getting too old to live with this kind of constant stress.

 

“I heard my name,” the woman in the doorway said, tracing a hand absently up and down the doorframe, her other hand clutching a set of rosary beads. Her voice surprised Dean, it was much lower than he’d expected – not high and creepy.

 

“I was trying to get the hunter to say what he thinks of us all, dear.”

 

Sara smiled wide. “I think I like the other one better.  He says we’re going to play music tonight.”

 

“We’re going to do what now?” Dean asked, deciding to ignore the first comment and trying to place the woman’s accent. Italian, maybe?

 

“What dances do you know?”

 

“Oh, no. I’m not a dancer, and I mean, you people can do as you please but we’re here to work.”

 

Sara smiled again, and Dean felt suddenly certain she knew something about him he didn’t. “No, you’re a dancer.”

 

“Maybe we should have an Anne Rice move night instead,” Daria muttered, smirking down at the table.

 

Dean laughed, feeling relieved to have a reason to look away from the other vampire. “Yeah, that’d be… appropriate…”

 

“No, seriously. Jim always has a copy of those movies handy. It’s infuriating.”

 

“You’re his other handy movie,” Sara put in, before laughing to herself. Dean kept looking at Daria, pleading with his eyes for rescue.

 

Daria of course, was biting down on laughter of her own. “I think I know what she means. Jim always makes us watch films with him that are based on the books he enjoyed most. I think he’s managed to track down even the most suspect fanfiction of your story, and now here he has you in person.”

 

“…Ah.” Dean pouted and nodded slowly. “How… suspect are we talking here?”

 

*

 

He knew it wasn’t exactly dream circumstances, but Cas realized somewhere along the line of helping clear the main hotel hall for a dance room that he’d never actually been to a party before. Never, in his whole existence, and more particularly, never in his few years on Earth with the Winchesters.

But then, he supposed it wasn’t exactly something they could encourage him into, having no doubt rarely attended any themselves.

 

“What exactly are they expecting?” Cas asked Sam as they started pulling chairs into a vague circle around the room.

 

Sam shrugged. “Music?”

 

“I heard talk about dancing…”

 

“We won’t exactly need to worry about canapes.”

 

“Hmm. Do you think vampires can take in alcohol?”

 

Sam screwed up his face. “I didn’t think to ask any of them. I mean, Dean is definitely not sharing his beer with that many people if they’re looking for it.” The scraping of the chair Sam now dragged across the floor seemed louder than the others had. “Did you talk to Dean today?”

 

Cas could feel his friend looking at him, but he studiously kept his eyes trained to the floor. “I did.”

 

“And?”

 

“And what?”

 

“Did you guys… talk about what had happened? Anything?”

 

“The conversation did not last that long.”

 

“Ah.”

 

Sam grimaced, before surveying the room. “I’m gonna see if I can find that broom Dean had earlier,” he said eventually. “Might fit the vampire vibe but it’d be nice not to be stepping on so many old cobwebs.”

 

When Sam walked away, Cas moved into the middle of the floor. No, he couldn’t remember ever attending any kind of party, but he was sure he’d learned how to dance, once. There’d been swishing in long ballgowns on warm summer nights, eyes watching the figures around him – and before that, dancing around a fire, the wind blowing sand into his hair…

 

The more he tried to remember times in vessels he’d had long ago the more he realized how scrambled those memories were – how inaccessible to him they’d been made. Naomi had so many answers to give him and now he’d never have the chance to even ask his questions of her.

 

Perhaps Dean was not the first human he’d ever been made to feel like this over.

 

But something in the way Cas could feel himself taking a breath out of reflex when Dean walked into the room instead of Sam made him think not.

 

“Hey,” Dean said, glancing nonchalantly around the room, checking that they were as alone as they appeared to be. He took a seat, putting one leg up on the seat beside him.

 

“Ok, so the vamps are starting to get antsy,” Dean said, looking down at the paper in his hands as though he was reading off of it. Of course, Cas could see well enough to know that nothing even slightly relevant was written on that page.

 

“Looks different on different people, but it’s definitely starting to look like the withdrawal is kicking in all round. Next couple of days are going to turn into a very tense rehab and I’ll be honest – we’re in the dark on who mighta talked to Carlos. Guy sounded like a lone wolf type, bar his sister.”

 

“So you don’t know anything new?”

 

“No. We got squat.”

 

Cas folded his arms. “So did you come in here to tell me nothing or did you come in here because you wanted to talk to me.”

 

Dean’s tongue snaked out to lick at his lips. “If I wanted to talk would you… want that?”

 

“You know I…”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Dammit, Cas, you know I’m no good at… talking,” Dean snapped, finally looking up at him, but only briefly.

 

Cas took a step closer to him, still with his arms wrapped across him like a shield. “You never used to have much of a problem talking to me.” When Dean stayed quiet Cas looked up at the ceiling. “Dean, are you… uncomfortable with what happened the other night?”

 

“No,” Dean said, voice hoarse.

 

“Was it just you not wanting Sam to see us like that, that -”

 

“I mean, yeah… but…” Dean sighed heavily. “Look, it wasn’t how I wanted Sam to find out, so I freaked. And then after you left and I sobered up I started freaking out about… all the other shit.”

 

“Are you encouraging me to try and read your mind, or were you planning to elaborate on that?”

 

Cas almost managed to make Dean smile and that felt like being given a gift.

 

Dean was about to say something, and Cas was almost certain it was going to be something that might really get them back on the same trajectory, but then Jim came in, in conversation with Sam and Sara about decorations, and after briefly meeting Dean’s eyes again, Cas knew that their moment of opportunity had gone again.

 

For now, at least.

*

 

Even before they got any music started and any atmosphere other than gloomy and awkward going in the large hall, Sam watched Cas and his brother start to ‘dance’ around each other. They weren’t talking directly with one another, from what he could see, but they did always seem to be near each other, whether in group conversation, or simply sitting down next to each other in what seemed to be amiable silence. When Jim and Martha stood up to suggest a talent competition later in the week, Sam caught them exchanging amused glances.

 

“You’ve been watching them all night, now. Are they really so unpredictable around each other?”

 

Sam tore his gaze away from his brother and friend sitting down at the same table together at last and turned to smile at Lucy, who’d appeared next to him. Like many of the others, there was a certain… twitchiness to her, no doubt brought on by the blood withdrawals that he hadn’t noticed in her earlier in the day, but she’d changed into a short blue dress, and still looked lovely.

 

“They’re definitely predictable in some ways,” Sam told her.

 

“Do you think they’ll survive if you take your eyes off them for a few moments?”

 

“What… uh, what did you have in mind?”

 

She smiled shyly and held a hand. “Fancy a dance? This one used to be my favorites.”

 

Sam paid attention to the song playing for the first time. “Britney, huh?”

 

“I mean she was very important to me as a teenager.”

 

Laughing now, Sam took the offered hand, and now forcing himself not to look back at Dean, led his dance partner onto the floor, where only a few others were trying to move around. He heard someone whistle as they started dancing – badly, Sam had never had any sense of rhythm – but ignored the attention to look at Lucy.

 

*

 

“Look at that idiot,” Dean huffed, finally breaking the silence that had fallen over their table since Martha had finally left them alone together.

 

“I assume you mean Sam?” Cas asked, following Dean’s gaze.

 

“You see any other… don’t answer that. We’re sitting in a vampire dance party.”

 

Cas looked at Sam, who seemed to be enjoying himself. He noticed that both brothers were more likely to do that when they weren’t around the other, or in Sam’s case now, pretended the other wasn’t watching.

 

“His dance skills aren’t exactly professional, but -”

 

“I’m not talking about his dance moves,” Dean said, flailing a hand in Sam’s direction. “ _Look_ at the way he’s looking at that vampire chick. He’s gone all… _gooey_. Stupid. Fuck, we’re still supposed to be _working._ ”

 

Tilting his head, Cas focused a little harder on Sam’s face. He would say Sam looked happier than he usually saw him, but stupid didn’t apply. Even happy, Sam still looked like he was thinking. But ‘gooey’… Cas thought he might know what Dean meant by that.

 

“You looked at me like that the other night. Before you stopped.”

 

Dean coughed. “We weren’t on duty then.” But then he snuck a smile in Cas’s direction, making Cas smile back despite himself.

 

“Just… seriously. Why’s he always falling for the monster girls?”

 

Cas shrugged. “Perhaps he is attracted to kindred spirits. Sam has struggled for a long time with feeling like an outsider himself.”

 

“Well sure, but don’t find the things that can’t die and wanna eat you, find a run-of-the mill goth or something.”

 

“Well what attracts you to me?”

 

Dean’s head jerked up in alarm. “Huh?”

 

“You _are_ attracted to me, at least on some levels. We both know that,” Cas tried leading him with. “We also know I’m far from human. I still probably don’t have a soul and I’m older than the Earth itself.” He stared at Dean until Dean eventually raised his head to look back at him. “Is that why you were ashamed of Sam knowing about us?”

 

“No - _fuck_ no,” Dean bit out immediately. “But is that…” Dean laughed, but it sounded like it was choked out of him. “Shit, man, this is like what I was trying to say the other night. How are we any kind of benefit to you?”

 

Cas screwed up his face. “What do you -”

 

“What are you gonna do after we die, huh, Cas?”

 

Inhaling unnecessarily and turning back to look at the dancefloor, Cas forced himself to think of an answer to that. “Neither of you have died recently. It’s been an impressive short run for the two of you.”

 

“Ok, but we _will_. And then where’s that gonna leave you?”

 

The noise of the vampires dancing and talking and playing their music continued on all around them, but Cas felt like it had all stopped, leaving them in a quiet bubble on their own.

 

“Hell,” Dean went on, “these vamps have at least all got each other. You’ve got no one who’s gonna be living through everything else with you, who -”

“What do you want me to tell you, Dean?” Cas asked, wearily. “That I’ve thought about this before? That I was thinking about that when I killed the reaper?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Of course I have. But I wouldn’t want to change the way things are for anything. You are my family now, so I will appreciate that while we are all here together.”

 

He looked back at Dean and tried for a smile. “Isn’t that what most people do?”

 

“Yeah, but -”

 

“I’d also like to kiss you, but I’m not sure how you’ll feel about that - and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable again.”

 

Dean looked as though he badly wanted to look away from Cas, but something was holding his eyes there against his will. He swallowed. “You’re the one supposed to be banned from sleeping with humans or whatever.”

 

“Yes, but you’re the one who’s not… who’s not sure. And that’s ok,” Cas forced out, trying to remind himself along with Dean. “I love you,” Cas said, and the words were coming out more awkwardly than they had any right to, “that won’t change based on who does or doesn’t know that. But I’d like to know where we stand with each other.”

 

Dean breathed out heavily as Cas watched the hand Dean had on the table ball into a fist. “You can’t just… _say_ shit like that.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“’Cause…” Dean’s eyes briefly scanned the room. No one was sitting all that close by them, and no one seemed to be paying them any attention, from what Cas could see. “’Cause it’s making me want to kiss you again, and I’m not sure I’m… ready for that. Out here like this with everyone. Just -”

 

Cas reached his hand out over the table towards Dean, and was rewarded with Dean’s fingers tentatively wrapping their way around his own. “That’s ok.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.” Unable to stop a smile spreading over his face, Cas looked back at Sam who was finally leading his partner off the dance floor and towards them.

 

Cas relaxed his hand, allowing Dean the choice to let go, but was instead surprised by Dean’s grip tightening as Sam arrived by their table, his brows furrowing like he was challenging his brother to mention it.

 

“Hey,” Sam said, sounding a little out of breath as he slumped down in a seat next to them. Cas watched him take in the hand holding, but to his credit Sam didn’t mention it, or let his eyes linger. “Got the dancefloor warmed up for you guys.”

 

“Playlist sucks,” Dean grunted.

 

“Don’t lie. You love this crap.”

 

“No I -” Dean stopped, and listened to a man singing about asking to be woken up in the morning. From the pop culture knowledge inserted in his head Cas recognized it from appearances in the movies _Zoolander_ , _Charlie’s Angels_ and _Sixteen Candles_ , though he had never actually heard it before.

 

“Yeah, you’re right. RIP George,” Dean said, taking a drink of his beer.

 

“So you guys gonna dance or what?”

 

Cas resisted the urge to look at Dean. Then the hand holding his was dragging him up out of his seat. “Sure, fuck it, why not,” Dean was saying.

 

“That’s the spirit,” Sam told them, shooting Cas a smile as he picked up Dean’s half-finished beer for himself.

 

“Dean, we don’t have to…” Cas reminded him as he allowed himself to be led out onto the floor.

 

Dean rolled his eyes and took hold of Cas’s other hand, the picture of nonchalance, even if Cas could hear how hard his heart was beating. “’Course we don’t _have_ to, but you’re… cute and maybe I actually like this dumb song and I want to dance with you, ok?”

 

Cas smiled, and let their linked hands dropped, and for a moment they were standing there not paying any attention to what was going on around them, swaying together.

 

Dean gulped. “Thing is, I don’t dance any better than Sam. Worse, probably. Fuck, at least he went to most of his school dances. I -”

 

Cas shrugged, and let go one hand to spin under Dean’s arm. “I think I remember dancing in the eighteenth century, but I’m not sure. I could potentially teach you though.”

 

Dean shook his head, choking out a laugh. “Not sure how well that’d fit with Wham…”

 

“Mmm,” Cas hummed, rubbing small circles into Dean’s wrist with his thumb. “We’re good at making odd things fit.”

 

*

 

Dean woke up lying across Cas’s lap. He opened his eyes briefly, remembered he was lying on the couch in the hall he’d intended to sit on all night keeping a more alert watch with Cas, but then closed them again, content to at least fake it a little longer if it meant the angel would keep on stroking at his hair like that.

 

“Dean?”

 

Dean groaned, and could imagine clearly the smile he was getting in response. God, Cas smiled so much more than he ever used to. Things never got any easier with what they did, but Cas did seem more capable of enjoying it and that was… sweet. Humbling, even, especially remembering a time when the thought of experiencing any feelings at all had alarmed the angel.

 

“Where’re the vamps?” Dean mumbled, keeping his eyes closed.

 

“Around. Most of them still in the ballroom. Angie should be administering their pills again soon.”

 

“Cool. Cas?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“’M’sorry for being a dick.”

 

“Well… I’m sorry too. Mostly for Sam.”

 

“Nah. He’s a big boy, he can deal. ‘Sides. He probably knew before, right?”

 

“Your brother is generally more perceptive than you give him credit for.” Cas’s rhythmic stroking halted for a moment. “Dean, why did you worry so much? About Sam knowing?”

 

Dean opened his eyes slightly, taking in the sight of the moulding wooden floorboards beneath him. “I don’t usually give a crap about what other people think. But Sammy’s the one I have to keep on living with, so… yeah. And I guess,” Dean admitted slowly, “I liked being able to stay a tough big brother he could look up to or something. It’s dumb.”

 

“Maybe a little.”

 

“Hey!”

 

The stroking fingers returned. “Only a little. You knew your fear was likely irrational, but that didn’t change how you felt. It’s very… human.”

 

Dean snorted. “Thanks, I guess?”

 

A few moments later he heard a fast-walking pair of feet bee-lining towards them and he started sitting up, although slower than he might have done the day before.

 

“Is everything alright?” Cas asked, as Angie stopped walking next to them. The scientist looked harried, her usually scraped back hair escaping from its bun in little curls reaching for the sky at odd angles.

 

“Yes – I mean, it will be fine, it’s just -”

 

“Hey,” Dean said, reaching out a hand to pat at the vampire’s arm. “Breathe. Wait,” he added, “do you even need to breathe?”

 

Angie didn’t laugh or answer his question. “I can’t find Sara,” she said, sounding as though the words were being forced out of her.

 

“Well, shit.”

 

“When did you see her last?” Cas asked her.

 

Angie scraped a shaking hand back over her hair. Ah. That was what had doomed the hairstyle today.

 

“Last night, after the dance, and then… I’m not sure. And no one I’ve spoken to has seen her.”

 

“We would know if the alarm on the building had been triggered by someone leaving,” Cas reminded her. “Unless someone found a way to tamper with our spellwork that we hadn’t anticipated, then she can’t have left the hotel. Have you – ”

 

“I’ve checked everywhere. We haven’t seen Lucy this morning yet either.”

 

Dean blinked. “The chick that went off with Sam last night?”

 

He’d wanted to say something last night, but he knew Sam would already know all of his arguments before he bothered bringing them up, so he hadn’t bothered. And it had been just such a change to see his brother looking happy again for one goddamn minute…

 

“Yes. Which means neither of them have had their morning supplements yet.”

 

Dean clenched both fists and forced himself to keep breathing. “I’m gonna go see if Sammy still has those blueprints he found for the building,” he stated. “And I’m gonna ask him if he’s seen the other two while I’m up there.”

 

Trying his best to ignore Cas’s voice and the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, Dean walked – not ran, not yet – to the room he and Sam had taken for themselves. They could have taken bedrooms of their own in a place so big filled with people who didn’t sleep, but even now they were well into their thirties they preferred the familiarity of having each other there when they hunted away from home, of knowing there was nothing to worry them if they woke up in the night in a strange place and wondered where the other was.

 

But Sam had brought a girl back, and Dean had been too caught up in his own lovelorn giddiness to think to check in, and now –

 

“Sam?” Dean yelled, knocking three times on the door. When no answer came, he roughly twisted the rusted doorknob and pushed open the door to find –

 

Not Sam.

 

The room wasn’t empty though. Lucy, who seemed to be knocked out, was lying against the wall on the floor, wearing only a terrible old hoody of Sam’s and her underwear.

 

Dean barely registered what she was wearing. The moment he noticed her there he marched over, bent down, and started shaking at her arms. “Hey. Lucy. Wake up.”

 

He was trying to be gentle, but it was hard when his brother was gone and he knew she had vampire super strength and could take it and his brother was gone.

 

Blinking all too slowly up at him, Lucy woke up, and then tried recoiling back from him, but it seemed almost as though she wasn’t able to, as though some invisible cord had tied her limbs together.

 

“Where is Sam?” Dean asked, slow and clear as he forced himself to ignore the terror on her face.

 

“He’s…” Her fear seemed to peak and she looked ready to burst into tears.

 

“He’s what, Lucy? _What happened_?”

 

“Dean?” Cas was there at the door now, with Angie barging in from behind him.

 

“Dean, get away from Lucy. She needs her supplements and you’re frightening her.”

 

“Well the fact that she’s obviously been knocked out and my brother and your psycho girlfriend are still missing frightens _me,_ ” Dean insisted, but he stood up and moved back.

 

Lucy really was crying now, big, blubbery baby tears, and Angie cradled her in her arms like a lost child as she reached into her pocket to hand her more pills.

 

“Dean,” Cas said softly at his shoulder. “Lucy smells of Sam’s blood. She drank some from him.”

 

After they’d got rid of the Mark from his arm Dean had assumed, hoped, that the kill switch inside him would go away – that the red vision rage it had brought on in him hadn’t really been him or at least not his… fault. Now he’d been Mark-free for over a year, but that didn’t mean the rage had gone, leaving him to wonder at times like these whether it had been there all along.

 

He became aware of what he was doing again when Cas started yelling at him in his ear.

 

“ _Put her down_ ,” Angie was growling at him.

 

Right. Down. Because he was now holding Lucy up against the wall, machete against her throat. And she was still crying and fuck, he’d _danced_ with these people last night…

 

Dean let go and slowly put the knife away, but kept his eyes on Lucy as she slumped back down the wall and heard Angie mutter, “great. Hunters were a fucking wonderful idea. Totally housetrained, he says…”

 

Angie’s head snapped back to face Dean. “ _Now_ what have you done to her? Why can’t she move?”

 

Lucy shook her head, the only part of her body she seemed to have any reliable control over. “Wasn’t him,” she said, blinking her eyes down hard, seemingly to stop her tears. “’S’dead man’s blood. Sam used it on me when I -” Her bottom lip started to wobble again.

 

“When you bit him,” Dean spat out.

 

She nodded, looking Dean in the eye now. “I swear I didn’t mean to. He was being so _nice_ and we were kissing and I -” She looked up at Angie. “The hunger was real bad, Ange.”

 

“So he was being nice and you were getting it on so you attacked him and he stopped you. Then what?”

 

“N-nothing!” The vampire’s wide eyes that Dean knew would shine like a cat’s in a darker room stared up at him unblinkingly. “I swear, nothing happened, not then. He’d paralyzed me, and I’d said I was sorry and he…” something about her face softened. “And he didn’t hate me. He… he said he knew what it felt like. I guess that’s why he was ready with that syringe already. He was smart enough not to trust me. But then we sat up and we… we talked. We talked most of the night, but then -”

 

“A big boy came and hit you on the head and ran away?”

 

Lucy swallowed, still trembling as she turned back to Angie. “I swear I didn’t see who it was. I _swear_. I want this cure to work out so bad, I wouldn’t -”

 

“Not a cure, Lucy,” Angie reminded her dully, before looking up at Dean and Cas. “Do you know where Sam would have left those blueprints you were talking about?”

 

Dean swallowed, feeling the comfort of Cas’s hand around his wrist.

 

“Try his jacket pockets.”

 

*

 

Sam woke up in the dark, which was the first thing to put him on edge. More often than not, in his own room in the bunker he left a light on for himself at night. He liked to be able to wake up and immediately know where he was and who was there was with him.

 

When he woke up he had none of that, and what worried him more was that after only a few moments of getting his bearings he could remember why he was there.

 

Chloroform… someone had come up behind him and drugged him.

 

He hadn’t been asleep, just not _paying enough attention_.

 

He’d known that - much as he liked Lucy and sympathized with her - sleeping would be a bad idea. He’d never had much of a chance to test Dead Man’s Blood on many vampires before, he wasn’t sure how long it would last, and he knew how important it was to keep awake around her, talk her through this critical moment.

 

God knows, he wished he could have had someone there with him when what his cravings had overwhelmed him and he’d been locked away.

 

Lucy hadn’t even chosen to feel the way she did. From what Sam had been able to gather from what she’d told him she’d met her ex-boyfriend when she was still in high school, and spent the next fifteen years of her life miserable, separated from her family, and a blood slave. It was only when he finally turned her that she’d had the chance to get away.

 

No, Sam didn’t think for a second, as he’d assured her last night, that Lucy had anything to do with where he was now.

 

He concentrated on learning what he could from what he could sense, despite not being able to see anything. It had to be morning by now, so he had to be inside, and it seemed unlikely that his attacker, knowing about the alarms, would have taken him from the building. And the air felt cold… damp even.

 

So the basement then, which from what Sam could remember from the plans he’d studied in the car coming over, was pretty big. Pretty far down too. He’d start screaming if things got worse, but for now there probably wasn’t any point in losing his voice and no one still being able to hear him.

 

Not expecting much leeway, Sam nevertheless started testing the ropes binding his wrists and ankles to and around the chair he’d been placed on. They were tight, effective, but all in all he’d definitely woken up to worst.

 

He was in a chair, and he hadn’t even been gagged. That was practically luxury.

 

Though he was in some pain. Lucy’s small bite now wasn’t the only place he was bleeding from. Someone had really gone to town on riddling his body with small strategically placed cuts.

 

It would only take the slightest of efforts to untie the ropes without having to struggle, only a little _push_ in his mind…

 

But he wasn’t going to think about that for the same reason he hadn’t let Lucy do any more than break the skin on his neck. And at this rate, having so fiercely repressed the powers that were in him, he wasn’t sure that he even knew how to anymore.

 

Besides. From what he could tell, he was the only one in here, no one else was at risk, no one –

 

Wait.

 

That was definitely breathing, or, more accurately, panting, coming from somewhere in front of him.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hi, Sam.”

 

Sam struggled for a moment to place to voice, which sounded, not smug or triumphant, but mostly just drained.

 

“Sara?”

 

“ _Hey_.”

 

“Are you…” Sam wasn’t sure what question he should be asking first, “ok?”

 

“Oh, _I’m_ fine. But you’re all hurt and I’m probably gonna eat you, so you’re not.”

 

If he’d had the space to move his neck more than a few inches he would have tossed his head back in irritation. “Any way I’m getting out of that?”

 

The vampire seemed to think on that for a few moments. “Probably not. Sorry.”

 

She sounded more like she was sorry that she’d forgotten to pick up a sandwich for him, but she did sound genuine.

 

“You… you didn’t bring me down here, did you?”

 

“No. I’m just the shark.”

 

“The…?”

 

“In the shark pit.”

 

Sam sighed as comprehension dawned. “Right. How… how long do you think you can hold out for?”

 

He thought he heard her shrugging. “Maybe a long time. But you smell good, and we both know I’m gonna snap snap snap sooner or later.”

 

“Ok… but my brother? He’s going to come looking for me, he’s going to get us out. But then if he finds you down here on your own…”

 

“He’ll try and kill me. But Angie won’t let him. And then she’ll feel bad.” The vampire made her statements with a dispassionate air of prophecy. “And then your angel friend… huh. Not sure what’ll happen there.”

 

“You don’t want to let that happen,” Sam prompted, when it sounded like she might have finished.

 

“Not really, no.”

 

“Ok… I can call for help. Do you know who brought you down here?”

 

Sam heard the vampire moving closer to him and tensed up. As he listened to her breathe in the scent of him and give a strange little whine in his throat he forced himself to stay still.

 

“The man with the money,” she said eventually.

 

“The man with the… Matthews?” Dean would love this, Sam thought to himself.

 

“Yeah, that guy. Never liked him. Jim liked his money.”

 

“Sara can you… would you untie me? Maybe I can help us find a way out of here.”

 

Sam held his breath as he waited on an answer. “You can’t see.”

 

“No, but it would make me… feel better.”

 

Sara laughed, but not unkindly. “If I’m going to eat you you’ll be eaten either way.”

 

“I know. But -”

 

Sam hadn’t heard her move, but in an instant the ropes tying his wrists together had snapped apart.

 

“Thanks,” he breathed, hesitantly moving his arms to rub feeling back into his arms as Sara laughed at him again.

 

“No thanks yet,” she said, and moved to untie his ankles.

 

Sam made sure to wait until he was sure she’d moved a little away from him before trying to stand up.

 

*

 

From what Cas had seen of him so far, he liked Jim. He thought it would be a shame if the vampire got himself punched in the gut by Dean after only the third day of their lockdown.

 

“Ok, I get that everyone’s freaking out at the moment,” the organizer was saying, palms open as he gestured, “but I don’t see why we need to panic anyone early.”

 

“Disaster’s struck already. You can’t avert anything, Jim,” Angie pointed out dully.

 

Cas was listening to Dean start growling out another ill-advised attack on the room around them when something else grabbed his attention.

 

_You there, Cas? I’m in the basement, I think. Sara’s with me. She said Matthews left us here._

Cas waited, but Sam apparently had nothing else to tell him. He’d never realized how frustrating the medium of prayer was until he’d become so used to phone calls.

 

“Sam’s in the basement,” Cas said aloud.

 

Dean turned and blinked at him. “He’s praying to you? He’s ok?”

 

“We have a basement here?” Jim asked.

 

“Sara is with him,” Cas said, watching as Angie’s face spasmed with a strange mix of fear and relief. “She said that Matthews is the one that put them down there.”

 

“That _creep_ ,” Angie muttered, as Dean grunted and pulled out his machete again while Jim’s eyes widened.

 

“But he’s the one _paying_ for all this. Why would he wreck it?”

 

“Why don’t we go ask him?” Dean asked, voice low. “Where will he be?”

 

Angie frowned. “My research – the pills… Without them the study falls apart.”

 

“Just like it would if he got your girlfriend to eat someone on day three,” Dean finished for her, squaring up his shoulders. “Where have you been keeping the pills and does he know about it?”

 

“He probably knows,” Jim admitted. “We’ve been keeping them in the office, and not exactly hiding them.”

 

 

“Ok, then that’s where I’m going,” Dean announced, before turning to Cas, none of the softness he’d been looking at him with earlier present there now.

 

“Get Sam out,” he ordered. Cas nodded, recognizing this as both a declaration of trust in Cas to protect what Dean valued best, and likely also Dean distancing himself from the danger of Sara before doing something he might regret.

 

*

 

Matthews was in the office right where they’d thought he’d be which was, with his adrenalin levels still telling him he had more of a chase to run, almost a disappointment to Dean. Even more frustrating was the lack of urgency in the vampire when Dean came in to find him looking over Angie’s notes, Jim rushing in at his heels. He looked more amused than startled at the sight of them.

 

“How can I help you boys?”

 

“You can start by slitting your own fucking throat and saving us the hassle,” Dean told him, trying to match the casual tone, even as he gripped his knife handle tighter.

 

The vampire chuckled. “Wouldn’t that defeat your own argument?” He addressed his words towards Jim now. “Isn’t that what you wanted us to find? Some proof that we are capable as a species of both change and artificial camaraderie?”

 

He shrugged. “I think the way you dealt with poor Carlos was already indicative of your failures there. And now Sara…” He smiled. “Such a _damaged_ creature that one… Now when your group of dancing friends realize that there aren’t any more supplements for them, and that the only things around to hunt for miles are locked in with them… well.”

 

“You do realize we have an actual angel with us.”

 

The vampire shrugged, and began slowly pacing sideways around the desk. “I’ll admit the circumstance we’ve found ourselves in are not exactly the ones I planned for. I don’t intend to be here to see the fallout.”

 

“So what this is all about making people feel worse about themselves, to stop progress, just so you get to keep being the big fish in the pond?”

 

“I’ve been alive a long time, and there’s a reason most of the people here aren’t far over a hundred. They still have a naivety that hasn’t been forced out of them, they still -”

 

It happened so fast Dean almost didn’t see what happened. One moment Jim was standing next to him, the next on the desk with Dean’s machete in hand, and a few moments later Dean was moving forward for a better look at Ethan Matthews’s decapitated head.

 

“Fuck,” he breathed, as Jim dropped the bloodied blade onto the desk with a thud.

 

 

 

 

“He honestly thought I wouldn’t hurt him,” Jim said slowly. “And he thought I was naïve. Huh.”

 

Dean took a few moments to force his breathing back to something steady. “Regrets?”

 

“Yes,” Jim said, already walking away. “I let him hurt my family.”

 

Dean watched him walk away for a few moments, feeling thoughtful. ‘Harmless’ Daria had called him, even knowing he’d been the one to end her brother. And Dean actually hadn’t bothered to question that.

 

*

 

Waking up in a hospital bed might not be a pleasant experience but it was still a shitload better than waking up tied up in a cold basement with a hungry vampire, Sam decided, opening his eyes to the sight of his brother starting to nod off the sleep in the chair by his bed.

 

“Dean?”

 

Dean’s eyes snapped wide open. “Hey, look who’s awake.”

 

“Not you.”

 

“Ha. You’re hilarious. Actually, I was being the most alert guard there’s ever been.” Dean leaned forwards in his seat, smile fading slightly. “You remember everything?”

 

“I think so.” Sam rubbed at the back of his head. “Not like I got hit on the head or anything. Just -”

 

“Nearly bled out and got eaten by a psycho vamp.”

 

Sam leant his head back down on the pillow. “Hey. Don’t call her that. She actually did really well holding back, even when it was obviously killing her.”

 

“Maybe we should get her a medal. ‘Vampire did not suck man’s blood’,” Dean said, spelling out the headline with a hand.

 

Sam rolled his eyes. “You got Matthews?”

 

“Jim did, but yeah. Put him down.”

 

“What’s going to happen to the project then?”

 

Dean shrugged, “Angie said they’re gonna try again soon as she can get more pills together. Maybe downscaling on the ambition this time.”

 

“Do they still have the money to get those together?” Sam asked, propping himself up on his elbows and only feeling some painful strain from his many wounds.

 

Dean laughed. “Oh they do. Apparently Jim kept a hold of the old vamp’s bank details…”

 

Sam smiled. “Nice.”

 

“He’s uh, he’s sent flowers actually,” Dean told him, pointing over to the table on the other side of Sam’s bed.

 

“Had a little apology note wrapped up in there too. Not sure they’re inviting us back though…”

 

“You didn’t go _too_ …”

 

“Too what?”

 

“Y’know. Too Rambo on them?”

 

Dean rolled his eyes and snorted before turning his smile into a comical grimace. “Uh… I mean it was probably a good thing your date really, uh, _sucked,_ before everything else went wrong…”

 

“It’s ok,” Sam assured him, after groaning only a little. “Probably for the best.”

 

“Why ‘cause she’s like way older than you?”

 

“She… actually wasn’t. I just… yeah.” To be honest Sam had been almost relieved when things hadn’t worked out. After everything Lady Bevell had put him through he was again more than a little hesitant about the idea of sex again. But talking had been nice.

 

Before the whole chloroform thing putting an end to that of course.

 

Dean kept looking at him, eyebrows raised, but when Sam continued not to elaborate he shrugged and got to his feet. “Alright. Well now I’ve seen you’re looking more alive I guess I’ll go and tell Cas the good news. He’s been sitting downstairs in the waiting bit and creeping everyone out by trying to find sly ways of healing people.” Dean shook his head, but it didn’t distract from the fond smile he wore.

 

“Cool. Tell him thanks.”

 

“And Dean?”

 

Dean paused at the door and looked back. “Yeah?”

 

“Things are good with you guys again now, right?”

 

“They’re… different,” Dean said carefully. “But yeah, sure. We’re good.”

 

“Awesome. Then don’t hurt him.”

 

“What?”

 

“You heard me,” Sam muttered, settling himself back down into the bed. “Don’t break his heart anymore, and don’t let him break yours.”

 

Dean narrowed his eyes as though he couldn’t decide whether or not he should be insulted by that.

 

“How much pain meds did they have to give you to turn you into JoAnn Ward?”

 

“Dude - how should I know? You _know_ I just woke up.”

 

After Dean grinned at him and left the room Sam sighed and slumped back more heavily on his pillow. Wherever Cas and his brother were with whatever they had going on with each other he was very, very glad he wasn’t still going to have to spend the rest of the week on house arrest with them both.

 

He’d still have preferred not having to nearly die to make that happen, but since it wasn’t exactly a novelty he’d take what he could get.

 

*

 

Cas was waiting exactly where Dean had left him.

 

“Sam?” Cas said, having started looking up at him the moment he walked through the doors.

 

“Is fine.” Dean sat down next to his friend, his… yeah, still his friend, always his friend first, and clutched at his own knees, trying to steady himself.

 

“I don’t know how much more I can take of nearly losing people.”

 

Cas’s brow creased with concern. “But you know Sam is fine. We got to him quickly, and the only reason we needed to bring him here was for a blood transfusion. I’ll be able to heal the rest of his injuries once-”

Dean dismissed Cas’s words with a wave. “I know that. He’s a tough nut. But…” Dean swallowed. “Hell, maybe I can’t play this gig forever. I did hesitate. I had that Scroogey old vampire right there and I hesitated. And I mean that’s never been me. I -”

 

“You’re allowed to change, Dean,” Cas told him quietly, placing a hand over Dean’s.

 

“Get weaker, you mean.”

 

“That’s not what I meant.”

 

“ _Frailer._ I’ll be a frail old man soon.”

 

“Dean,” Cas reprimanded him softly.

 

“D’you think that’s what all the vamps wanted Angie to give them?”

 

“What?”

 

“Y’know.” Dean gestured vaguely to the hospital they were sitting in. “Ageing. Death. An ending. Isn’t that what all you immortal types are after all the time?”

 

The angel seemed to give that some thought as he slowly started stroking soothing circles over Dean’s hand with his thumb.

 

“Actually, I’ve always liked starts.”

 

Not sure how to respond to that, Dean simply let Cas squeeze down on his hand a little harder.

 

*


End file.
